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ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 



ESSAYS IN CRITICISM. 



BY 

MATTHEW ARNOLD. 



SECOND EDITION. 



MACMILLAN AND CO. 

1869. 



[The Right of Translation is reserved.'] 



•E3 



LONDON : 

R. CLAY, SONS, AND TAYLOR, PRINTERS, 

BREAD STREET KILL. 

Gift 

ON 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 
PREFACE vii 

THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM AT THE PRESENT TIME . . I 

THE LITERARY INFLUENCE OF ACADEMIES 39 

MAURICE DE GUERIN 75 

EUGENIE DE GUERIN 114 

HEINRICH HEINE 147 

PAGAN AND MEDIAEVAL RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT 183 

JOUBERT 2IO 

SPINOZA AND THE BIBLE 249 

MARCUS AURELIUS 284 



PREFACE. 

(1865.) 

Several of the Essays which are here collected and 
reprinted had the good or the bad fortune to be much 
criticised at the time of their first appearance. I am not 
now going to inflict upon the reader a reply to those 
criticisms ; for one or two explanations which are desir- 
able, I shall elsewhere, perhaps, be able some day to 
find an opportunity ; but, indeed, it is not in my nature, — 
some of my critics would rather say, not in my power, — 
to dispute on behalf of any opinion, even my own, very 
obstinately. To try and approach truth on one side 
after another, not to strive or cry, nor to persist in 
pressing forward, on any one side, with violence and 
self-will, — it is only thus, it seems to me, that mortals 
may hope to gain any vision of the mysterious Goddess, 
whom we shall never see except in outline, but only thus 
even in outline. He who will do nothing but fight impe- 
tuously towards her on his own, one, favourite, particular 



Vlll PREFACE. 

line, is inevitably destined to run his head into the folds 
of the black robe in which she is wrapped. 

So it is not to reply to my critics that I write this 
preface, but to prevent a misunderstanding, of which 
certain phrases that some of them use make me appre- 
hensive. Mr. Wright, one of the many translators of 
Homer, has published a Letter to the Dean of Canter- 
bury, complaining of some remarks of mine, uttered now 
a long while ago, on his version of the Iliad. One 
cannot be always studying one's own works, and I was 
really under the impression, till I saw Mr. Wright's com- 
plaint, that I had spoken of him with all respect. The 
reader may judge of my astonishment, therefore, at find- 
ing, from Mr. Wright's pamphlet, that I had " declared 
with much solemnity that there is not any proper reason 
for his existing." That I never said; but, on looking 
back at my Lectures on translating Homer, I find that 
I did say, not that Mr. Wright, but that Mr. Wright's 
version of the Iliad, repeating in the main the merits and 
defects of Cowper's version, as Mr. Sotheby's repeated 
those of Pope's version, had, if I might be pardoned for 
saying so, no proper reason for existing. Elsewhere I 
expressly spoke of the merit of his version ; but I con- 
fess that the phrase, qualified as I have shown, about its 



PREFACE. IX 

want of a proper reason for existing, I used. Well, the 
phrase had, perhaps, too much vivacity ; we have all of 
us a right to exist, we and our works ; an unpopular 
author should be the last person to call in question this 
right. So I gladly withdraw the offending phrase, and I 
am sorry for having used it ; Mr. Wright, however, 
would perhaps be more indulgent to my vivacity, if he 
considered that we are none of us likely to be lively 
much longer. My vivacity is but the last sparkle of flame 
before we are all' in the dark, the last glimpse of colour 
before we all go into drab, — the drab of the earnest, 
prosaic, practical, austerely literal future. Yes, the world 
will soon be the Philistines' ! and then, with every voice, 
not of thunder, silenced, and the whole earth filled and 
ennobled every morning by the magnificent roaring of 
the young lions of the Daily Telegraph, we shall all yawn 
in one another's faces with the dismallest, the most 
unimpeachable gravity. 

But I return to my design in writing this Preface. 
That design was, after apologising to Mr. Wright for my 
vivacity of five years ago, to beg him and others to let 
me bear my own burdens, without saddling the great and 
famous University, to which I have the honour to belong 
with any portion of them. What I mean to deprecate 



X PREFACE. 

is such phrases as, " his professorial assault," " his 
assertions issued ex cathedra" " the sanction of his name 
as the representative of poetry," and so on. Proud as 
I am of my connection with the University of Oxford,* I 
can truly say, that knowing how unpopular a task one is 
undertaking when one tries to pull out a few more stops 
in that powerful but at present somewhat narrow-toned 
organ, the modern Englishman, I have always sought to 
stand by myself, and to compromise others as little as 
possible. Besides this, my native modesty is such, that I 
have always been shy of assuming the honourable style 
of Professor, because this is a title I share with so many 
distinguished men, — Professor Pepper, Professor Ander- 
son, Professor Frickel, and others, — who adorn it, I feel, 
much more than I do. 

However, it is not merely out of modesty that I prefer 
to stand alone, and to concentrate on myself, as a plain 
citizen of the republic of letters, and not as an office- 
bearer in a hierarchy, the whole responsibility for all I 
write ; it is much more out of genuine devotion to the 
University of Oxford, for which I feel, and always must 
feel, the fondest, the most reverential attachment. In an 

* When the above was written the author still had the Chair of 
Poetry at Oxford, which he has since vacated. 



PREFACE. XI 

epoch of dissolution and transformation, such as that on 
which we are now entered, habits, ties, and associations 
are inevitably broken up, the action of individuals 
becomes more distinct, the shortcomings, errors, heats, 
disputes, which necessarily attend individual action, are 
brought into greater prominence. Who would not gladly 
keep clear, from all these passing clouds, an august insti- 
tution which was there before they arose, and which will 
be there when they have blown over ? 

It is true, the Saturday Review maintains that our epoch 
of transformation is finished ; that we have found our phi- 
losophy ; that the British nation has searched all anchor- 
ages for the spirit, and has finally anchored itself, in the 
fulness of perfected knowledge, on Benthamism. This 
idea at first made a great impression on me ; not only 
because it is so consoling in itself, but also because it 
explained a phenomenon which in the summer of last 
year had, I confess, a good deal troubled me. At that 
time my avocations led me to travel almost daily on one 
of the Great Eastern Lines, — the Woodford Branch. 
Every one knows that the murderer, Miiller, perpetrated 
his detestable act on the North London Railway, close 
by. The English middle class, of which I am myself a 
feeble unit, travel on the Woodford Branch in large 



XU PREFACE. 

numbers. Well, the demoralisation of our class, — the 
class which (the newspapers are constantly saying it, 
so I may repeat it without vanity) has done all the 
great things which have ever been done in England, 
— the demoralisation, I say, of our class, caused by 
the Bow tragedy, was something bewildering. Myself 
a transcendentalist (as the Saturday Review knows), 
I escaped the infection ; and, day after day, I used 
to ply my agitated fellow-travellers with all the con- 
solations which my transcendentalism would naturally 
suggest to me. I reminded them how Caesar refused 
to take precautions against assassination, because life 
was not worth having at the price of an ignoble soli- 
citude for it. I reminded them what insignificant atoms 
we all are in the life of the world. " Suppose the 
worst to happen," I said, addressing a portly jeweller 
from Cheapside ; " suppose even yourself to be the 
victim ; il r?y a pas d'homme necessaire. We should 
miss you for a day or two upon the Woodford Branch : 
but the great mundane movement would still go on, the 
gravel walks of your villa would still be rolled, dividends 
would still be paid at the Bank, omnibuses would still 
run, there would still be the old crush at the corner of 
Fenchurch Street." All was of no avail. Nothing could 



PREFACE. Xlll 

moderate, in the bosom of the great English middle- 
class, their passionate, absorbing, almost blood-thirsty 
clinging to life. At the moment I thought this over- 
concern a little unworthy j but the Saturday Review 
suggests a touching explanation of it. What I took for 
the ignoble clinging to life of a comfortable worldling, 
was, perhaps, only the ardent longing of a faithful Ben- 
thamite, traversing an age still dimmed by the last mists 
of transcendentalism, to be spared long enough to see 
his religion in the full and final blaze of its triumph. 
This respectable man, whom I imagined to be going up 
to London to serve his shop, or to buy shares, or to 
attend an Exeter Hall meeting, or to assist at the de- 
liberations of the Marylebone Vestry, was, perhaps, in 
real truth, on a pious pilgrimage, to obtain from Mr. 
Bentham's executors a sacred bone of his great, dis- 
sected master. 

And yet, after all, I cannot but think that the Saturday 
Review has here, for once, fallen a victim to an idea, — 
a beautiful but deluding idea, — and that the British 
nation has not yet, so entirely as the reviewer seems to 
imagine, found the last word of its philosophy. No, we 
are all seekers still ! seekers often make mistakes, and I 
wish mine to redound to my own discredit only, and not 



XIV PREFACE. 

to touch Oxford. Beautiful city ! so venerable, so lovely, 
so unravaged by the fierce intellectual life of our century, 
so serene ! 

" There are our young barbarians, all at play ! " 

And yet, steeped in sentiment as she lies, spreading her 
gardens to the moonlight, and whispering from her towers 
the last enchantments of the Middle Age, who will deny 
that Oxford, by her ineffable charm, keeps ever calling us 
nearer to the true goal of all of us, to the ideal, to perfec- 
tion, — to beauty, in a word, which is only truth seen 
from another side ? — nearer, perhaps, than all the science 
of Tubingen. Adorable dreamer, whose heart has been 
so romantic ! who hast given thyself so prodigally, given 
thyself to sides and to heroes not mine, only never to 
the Philistines ! home of lost causes, and forsaken beliefs, 
and unpopular names, and impossible loyalties ! what 
example could ever so inspire us to keep down the Phi- 
listine in ourselves, what teacher could ever so save us 
from that bondage to which we are all prone, that 
bondage which Goethe, in those incomparable lines on 
the death of Schiller, makes it his friend's highest praise 
(and nobly did Schiller deserve the praise) to have left 
miles out of sight behind him; — the bondage of "was 



PREFACE. XV 

wis alle bandigt, das gemeinev She will forgive me, 
even if I have unwittingly drawn upon her a shot or 
two aimed at her unworthy son j for she is generous, 
and the cause in which I fight is, after all, hers. Appa- 
ritions of a day, what is our puny warfare against the 
Philistines, compared with the warfare which this queen 
of romance has been waging against them for centuries, 
and will wage after we are gone ? 



THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM AT THE 
PRESENT TIME. 

Many objections have been made to a proposition 
which, in some remarks of mine on translating Homer, 
I ventured to put forth; a proposition about criticism, 
and its importance at the present day. I said : " Of 
the literature of France and Germany, as of the intellect 
of Europe in general, the main effort, for now many 
years, has been a critical effort ; the endeavour, in all 
branches of knowledge, theology, philosophy, history, 
art, science, to see the object as in itself it really is." 
I added, that owing to the operation in English litera- 
ture of certain causes, " almost the last thing for which 
one would come to English literature is just that very 
thing which now Europe most desires,— criticism;" and 
that the power and value of English literature was 
thereby impaired. More than one rejoinder declared 
that the importance I here assigned to criticism was 
excessive, and asserted the inherent superiority of the 
creative effort of the human spirit over its critical 
effort. And the other day, having been led by an 



2 THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM 

excellent notice of Wordsworth * published in the North 
British Review, to turn again to his biography, I found, 
in the words of this great man, whom I, for one, must 
always listen to with the profoundest respect, a sentence 
passed on the critic's business, which seems to justify 
every possible disparagement of it. Wordsworth says 
in one of his letters : — 

" The writers in these publications " (the Reviews), 
" while they prosecute their inglorious employment, can 
not be supposed to be in a state of mind very favour- 
able for being affected by the finer influences of a thing 
so pure as genuine poetry." 

And a trustworthy reporter of his conversation quotes 
a more elaborate judgment to the same effect : — 

''Wordsworth holds the critical power very low, in-, 
finitely lower than the inventive; and he said to-day 
that if the quantity of time consumed in writing critiques 
on the works of others were given to original com- 
position, of whatever kind it might be, it would be 
much better employed; it would make a man find out' 
sooner his own level, and it would do infinitely less 

* I cannot help thinking that a practice, common in England 
during the last century, and still followed in France, of printing a 
notice of this kind, — a notice by a competent critic, — to serve as an 
introduction to an eminent author's works, might be revived among 
us with advantage. To introduce all succeeding editions of Words- 
worth, Mr. Sharp's notice (it is permitted, I hope, to mention his 
name) might, it seems to me, excellently serve ; it is written from 
the point of view of an admirer, nay, of a disciple, and that is 
right ; but then the disciple must be also, as in this case he is, a 
critic, a man of letters, not, as too often happens, some relation or 
friend with no qualification for his task except affection for his 
author. 



AT THE PRESENT TIME. 3 

mischief. A false or. malicious criticism may do much 
injury to the minds of others ; a stupid invention, either 
in prose or verse, is quite harmless." 

It is almost too much to expect of poor human 
nature, that a man capable of producing some effect in 
one line of literature, should, for the greater good of 
society, voluntarily doom himself to impotence and 
obscurity in another. Still less is this to be expected 
from men addicted to the composition of the " false or 
malicious criticism," of which Wordsworth speaks. How- 
-ever, everybody would admit that a false or malicious 
criticism had better never have been written. Every- 
body, too, would be willing to admit, as a general propo- 
sition, that the critical faculty is lower than the inventive. 
But is it true that criticism is really, in itself, a baneful 
and injurious employment ; is it true that all time given 
to writing critiques on the works of others would be 
much better employed if it were given to original 
composition, of whatever kind this may be ? Is it true 
that Johnson had better have gone on producing 
more Irenes instead of writing his Lives of the Poets; 
nay, is it certain that Wordsworth himself was better 
employed in making his Ecclesiastical Sonnets, than 
when he made his celebrated Preface, so full of criticism, 
and criticism of the works of others ? Wordsworth was 
himself a great critic, and it is to be sincerely regretted 
that he has not left us more criticism ; Goethe was one 
of the greatest of critics, and we may sincerely congra- 
tulate ourselves that he has left us so much criticism. 
Without wasting time over the exaggeration which 
Wordsworth's judgment on criticism clearly contains, or 
b 2 



4 THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM 

over an attempt to trace the causes, — not difficult I 
think to be traced, — which may have led Wordsworth to 
this exaggeration, a critic may with advantage seize an 
occasion for trying his own conscience, and for asking 
himself of what real service, at any given moment, the 
practice of criticism either is, or may be made, to his own 
mind and spirit, and to the minds and spirits of others. 

The critical power is of lower rank than the creative. 
True; but in assenting to this proposition, one or two 
things are to be kept in mind. It is undeniable that the 
exercise of a creative power, that a free creative activity, 
is the true function of man ; it is proved to be so by 
man's finding in it his true happiness. But it is un- 
deniable, also, that men may have the sense of exercising 
this free creative activity in other ways than in producing 
great works of literature or art; if it were not so, all 
but a very few men would be shut out from the true 
happiness of all men ; they may have it in well-doing, 
they may have it in learning, they may have it even in 
criticising. This is one thing to be kept in mind. 
Another is, that the exercise of the creative power in the 
production of great works of literature or art, however 
high this exercise of it may rank, is not at all epochs 
and under all conditions possible ; and that therefore 
labour may be vainly spent in attempting it, which might 
with more fruit be used in preparing for it, in rendering 
it possible. This creative power works with elements, 
with materials ; what if it has not those materials, those 
elements, ready for its use ? In that case it must surely 
wait till they are ready. Now in literature, — I will limit 
myself to literature, for it is about literature that the 



AT THE PRESENT TIME. 5 

question arises, the elements with which the creative 
power works are ideas ; the best ideas, on every matter 
which literature touches, current at the time ; at any rate 
we may lay it down as certain that in modern literature 
no manifestation of the creative power not working with 
these can be very important or fruitful. And I say 
current at the time, not merely accessible at the time ; 
for creative literary genius does not principally show 
itself in discovering new ideas ; that is rather the business 
of the philosopher : the grand work of literary genius is * 
a work of synthesis and exposition, not of analysis and; 
discovery ; its gift lies in the faculty of being happily in- 
spired by a certain intellectual and spiritual atmosphere^ 
by a certain order of ideas, when it finds itself in them ; 
of dealing divinely with these ideas, presenting them in 
the most effective and attractive combinations, — making 
beautiful works with them, in short. But it must have 
the atmosphere, it must find itself amidst the order of 
ideas, in order to work freely; and these it is not so 
easy to command. This is why great creative epochs 
in literature are so rare ; this is why there is so much 
that is unsatisfactory in the productions of many men of 
real genius ; because for the creation of a master-work 
of literature two powers must concur, the power of the 
man and the power of the moment, and the man is not 
enough without the moment ; the creative power has, for 
its happy exercise, appointed elements, and those ele- 
ments are not in its own control. 

Nay, they are more within the control of the critical 
power. It is the business of the critical power, as I said 
in the words already quoted, " in all branches of know- 



6 THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM 

ledge, theology, philosophy, history, art, science, to see 
the object as in itself it really is." Thus it tends, at last, 
to make an intellectual situation of which the creative 
power can profitably avail itself. It tends to establish 
an order of ideas, if not absolutely true, yet true by 
comparison with that which it displaces ; to make the 
best ideas prevail. Presently these new ideas reach 
society, the touch of truth is the touch of life, and there 
is a stir and growth everywhere ; out of this stir and 
growth come the creative epochs of literature. 

Or, to narrow our range, and quit these considerations 
of the general march of genius and of society, considera- 
tions which are apt to become too abstract and impal- 
pable, — every one can see that a poet, for instance, ought 
to know life and the world before dealing with them in 
poetry ; and life and the world being, in modern times, 
very complex things, the creation of a modern poet, to 
be worth much, implies a great critical effort behind it : 
else it must be a comparatively poor, barren, and short- 
lived affair. This is why Byron's poetry had so little 
endurance in it, and Goethe's so much ; both Byron 
and Goethe had a great productive power, but Goethe's 
was nourished by a great critical effort providing the true 
materials for it, and Byron's was not ; Goethe knew life 
and the world, the poet's necessary subjects, much more 
comprehensively and thoroughly than Byron. He knew 
a great deal more of them, and he knew them much more 
as they really are. 

It has long seemed to me that the burst of creative 
activity in our literature, through the first quarter of this 
century, had about it, in fact, something premature ; and 



AT THE PRESENT TIME. 7 

that from this cause its productions are doomed, most of 
them, in spite of the sanguine hopes which accompanied 
and do still accompany them, to prove hardly more 
lasting than the productions of far less splendid epochs. 
And this prematureness comes from its having proceeded 
without having its proper data, without sufficient materials 
to work with. In other words, the English poetry of the 
first quarter of this century, with plenty of energy, plenty 
of creative force, did not know enough. This makes 
Byron so empty of matter, Shelley so incoherent, Words- 
worth even, profound as he is, yet so wanting in com- 
pleteness and variety. Wordsworth cared little for books, 
and disparaged Goethe. • I admire Wordsworth, as he is, 
so much that I cannot wish him different ; and it is vain, 
no doubt, to imagine such a man different from what he 
is, to suppose that he could have been different; but 
surely the one thing wanting to make Wordsworth an 
even greater poet than he is, — his thought richer, and his 
influence of wider application, — was that he should have 
read more books, among them, no doubt, those of that 
Goethe whom he disparaged without reading him. 

But to speak of books and reading may easily lead to 
a misunderstanding here. It was not really books and 
reading that lacked to our poetry, at this epoch ; Shelley 
had plenty of reading, Coleridge had immense reading. 
Pindar and Sophocles — as we all say so glibly, and often 
with so little discernment of the real import of what we 
are saying — had not many books ; Shakspeare was no 
deep reader. True ; but in the Greece of Pindar and 
Sophocles, in the England of Shakspeare, the poet lived 
in a current of ideas in the highest degree animating and 



8 THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM 

nourishing to the creative power; society was, in the 
fullest measure, permeated by fresh thought, intelligent 
and alive ; and this state of things is the true basis for 
the creative power's exercise, — in this it finds its data, its 
materials, truly ready for its hand ; all the books and 
reading in the world are only valuable as they are helps 
to this. Even when this does not actually exist, books 
and reading may enable a man to construct a kind of 
semblance of it in his own mind, a world of knowledge 
and intelligence in which he may live and work : this is 
by no means an equivalent, to the artist, for the nationally 
diffused life and thought of the epochs of Sophocles or 
| Shakspeare, but, besides that it may be a means of 
| preparation for such epochs, it does really constitute, if 
many share in it, a quickening and sustaining atmosphere 
of great value. Such an atmosphere the many-sided 
learning and the long and widely-combined critical effort 
of Germany formed for Goethe, when he lived and 
worked. There was no national glow of life and thought 
there, as in the Athens of Pericles, or the England of 
Elizabeth. That was the poet's weakness. But there 
was a sort of equivalent for it in the complete culture and 
unfettered thinking of a large body of Germans. That 
was his strength. In the England of the first quarter of 
this century, there was neither a national glow of life and 
thought, such as we had in the age of Elizabeth, nor yet 
a culture and a force of learning and criticism, such as 
were to be found in Germany. Therefore the creative 
power of poetry wanted, for success in the highest sense, 
materials and a basis ; a thorough interpretation of the 
world was necessarily denied to it. 



AT THE PRESENT TIME. 9 

At first sight it seems strange that out of the immense 
stir of the French Revolution and its age should not 
have come a crop of works of genius equal to that which 
came out of the stir of the great productive time of 
Greece, or out of that of the Renaissance, with its 
powerful episode the Reformation. But the truth is that 
the stir of the French Revolution took a character which 
essentially distinguished it from such movements as these. 
These were, in the main, disinterestedly intellectual and 
spiritual movements ; movements in which the human 
spirit looked for its satisfaction in itself and in the in- 
creased play of its own activity : the French Revolution 
took a political, practical character. The movement 
which went on in France under the o]d regime, from 
1700 to 1789, was far more really akin than that of the 
Revolution itself to the movement of the Renaissance ; 
the France of Voltaire and Rousseau told far more 
powerfully upon the mind of Europe than the France of 
the Revolution. Goethe reproached this last expressly 
with having " thrown quiet culture back." Nay, and the 
true key to how much in our Byron, even in our Words- 
worth, is this ! — that they had their source in a great 
movement of feeling, not in a great movement of mind. 
The French Revolution, however, — that object of so 
much blind love and so much blind hatred, — found 
undoubtedly its motive-power in the intelligence of men 
and not in their practical sense ; — this is what distin- 
guishes it from the English Revolution of Charles the 
First's time ; this is what makes it a more spiritual event 
than our Revolution, an event of much more powerful 
and world-wide interest, though practically less success- 



IO THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM 

fill; — it appeals to an order of ideas which are universal, 
certain, permanent. 1789 asked of a thing, Is it rational? 
1642 asked of a thing, Is it legal? or, when it went 
furthest, Is it according to conscience? This is the 
English fashion ; a fashion to be treated, within its own 
sphere, with the highest respect; for its success, within its 
own sphere, has been prodigious. But what is law in one 
place, is not law in another; what is law here to-day, 
is not law even here to-morrow ; and as for conscience, 
what is binding on one man's conscience is not binding 
on another's ; the old woman who threw her stool at the 
head of the surpliced minister in St. Giles's Church at 
Edinburgh obeyed an impulse to which millions of the 
human race may be pennitted to remain strangers. But 
the prescriptions of reason are absolute, unchanging, 
of universal validity ; to count by tens is the easiest way 
of counting, — that is a proposition of which every one, 
from here to the Antipodes, feels the force ; at least, 
I should say so, if we did not live in a country where 
it is not impossible that any morning we may find a 
letter in the Times declaring that a decimal coinage is 
an absurdity. That a whole nation should have been 
penetrated with an enthusiasm for pure reason, and with 
an ardent zeal for making its prescriptions triumph, is a 
very remarkable thing, when we consider how little of 
mind, or anything so worthy and quickening as mind, 
comes into the motives which alone, in general, impel 
great masses of men. In spite of the extravagant direc- 
tion given to this enthusiasm, in spite of the crimes 
and follies in which it lost itself, the French Revolution 
derives from the force, truth, and universality of the 



AT THE PRESENT TIME. 1 I 

ideas which it took for its law, and from the passion 
with which it could inspire a multitude for these ideas, 
a unique and still living power; it is — it will probably 
long remain — the greatest, the most animating event 
in history. And, as no sincere passion for the things 
of the mind, even though it turn out in many respects 
an unfortunate passion, is ever quite thrown away and 
quite barren of good, France has reaped from hers one 
fruit, the natural and legitimate fruit, though not pre- 
cisely the grand fruit she expected ; she is the country 
in Europe where the people is most alive. 

But the mania for giving an immediate political and 
practical application to all these fine ideas of the reason 
was fatal. Here an Englishman is in his element : on 
this theme we can all go on for hours. And all we 
are in the habit of saying on it has undoubtedly a great 
deal of truth. Ideas cannot be too much prized in and 
for themselves, cannot be too much lived with ; but to 
transport them abruptly into the world of politics and 
practice, violently to revolutionise this world to their 
bidding, — that is quite another thing. There is the world 
of ideas and there is the world of practice ; the French are 
often for suppressing the one and the English the other ; 
but neither is to be suppressed. A member of the House 
of Commons said to me the other day : " That a thing 
is an anomaly, I consider to be no objection to it what- 
ever." I venture to think he was wrong; that a thing 
is an anomaly is an objection to it, but absolutely and in 
the sphere of ideas : it is not necessarily, under such and 
such circumstances, or at such and such a moment, an 
objection to it in the sphere of politics and practice. 



12 THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM 

Joubert has said beautifully : " C'est la force et le droit 
qui reglent toutes choses dans le monde ; la force en 
attendant le droit." (Force and right are the governors 
of this world; force till right is ready.) Force till right is 
ready ; and till right is ready, force, the existing order 
of things, is justified, is the legitimate ruler. But right 
is something moral, and implies inward recognition, free 
assent of the will ; we are not ready for right, — right, so 
far as we are concerned, is not ready, — until we have 
attained this sense of seeing it and willing it. The way 
in which for us it may change and transform force, the 
existing order of things, and become, in its turn, the 
legitimate ruler of the world, will depend on the way 
in which, when our time comes, we see it and will it. 
Therefore for other people enamoured of their own 
newly discerned right, to attempt to impose it upon us as 
ours, and violently to substitute their right for our force, 
is an act of tyranny, and to be resisted. It sets at nought 
fhe second great half of our maxim, force till right is 
ready. This was the grand error of the French Revolu- 
tion ; and its movement of ideas, by quitting the intel- 
; lectual sphere and rushing furiously into the political 
I sphere, ran, indeed, a prodigious and memorable course, 
j but produced no such intellectual fruit as the movement 
of ideas of the Renaissance, and created, in opposition 
to itself, what I may call an epoch of concentratio?i. The 
great force of that epoch of concentration was England ; 
and the great voice of that epoch of concentration was 
Burke. It is the fashion to treat Burke's writings on the 
French Revolution as superannuated and conquered by 
the event; as the eloquent but unphilosophical tirades 



AT THE PRESENT TIME. 1 3 

of bigotry and prejudice. I will not deny that they are 
often disfigured by the violence and passion of the 
moment, and that in some directions Burke's view was 
bounded, and his observation therefore at fault ; but on 
the whole, and for those who can make the needful 
corrections, what distinguishes these writings is their 
profound, permanent, fruitful, philosophical truth; they 
contain the true philosophy of an epoch of concentration, 
dissipate the heavy atmosphere which its own nature is 
apt to engender round it, and make its resistance rational 
instead of mechanical. 

But Burke is so great because, almost alone in England, 
he brings thought to bear upon politics, he saturates 
politics with thought ; it is his accident that his ideas 
were at the service of an epoch of concentration, not of 
an epoch of expansion ; it is his characteristic that he so 
lived by ideas, and had such a source of them w r elling up 
within him, that he could float even an epoch of con- 
centration and English Tory politics with them. It does 
not hurt him that Dr. Price and the Liberals were enraged 
with him; it does not even hurt him that George the Third 
and the Tories were enchanted with him. His greatness 
is that he lived in a world which neither English Liberal- 
ism nor English Toryism is apt to enter ; — the world of 
ideas, not the w T orld of catchwords and party habits. So 
far is it from being really true of him that he " to party 
gave up what was meant for mankind," that at the very 
end of his fierce struggle with the French Revolution, 
after all his invectives against its false pretensions, hollow- 
ness, and madness, with his sincere conviction of its 
mischievousness, he can close a memorandum on the 






/ti 



U . 






14 THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM 

best means of combating it, some of the last pages 
he ever wrote, — the Thoughts on French Affairs, in 
December 1791, — with these striking words : — 

" The evil is stated, in my opinion, as it exists. The 
remedy must be where power, wisdom, and information, 
I hope, are more united with good intentions than they 
can be with me. I have done with this subject, I believe, 
for ever. It has given me many anxious moments for 
the last two years. If a great cha7ige is to be made in 
human affairs, the minds of men will be fitted to it ; the 
general opinions and feelings will draw that way. Every 
fear, every hope will forward it ; and then they who persist 
in opposing this mighty cnrre?it in human affairs, will 
appear rather to resist the decrees of Provide?ice itself, than 
the mere designs of men. They will not be resolute and 
firm, but perverse and obstinate." 

That return of Burke upon himself has always seemed 
to me one of the finest things in English literature, or 
indeed in any literature. That is what I call living by 
ideas ; when one side of a question has long had your 
earnest support, when all your feelings are engaged, when 
you hear all round you no language but one, when your 
party talks this language like a steam-engine and can 
imagine no other, — still to be able to think, still to be 
irresistibly carried, if so it be, by the current of thought 
to the opposite side of the question, and, like Balaam, to 
be unable to speak anything but what the Lord has put in 
your mouth. I know nothing more striking, and I must 
add that I know nothing more un-English. 

For the Englishman in general is like my friend the 
Member of Parliament, and believes, point-blank, that 



AT THE PRESENT TIME. 1 5 

for a thing to be an anomaly is absolutely no objection 
to it whatever. He is like the Lord Auckland of Burke's 
day, who, in a memorandum on the French Revolution, 
talks of " certain miscreants, assuming the name of 
philosophers, who have presumed themselves capable of 
establishing a new system of society." The Englishman 
has been called a political animal, and he values what is 
political and practical so much that ideas easily become 
objects of dislike in his eyes, and thinkers " miscreants," 
because ideas and thinkers have rashly meddled with 
politics and practice. This would be all very well if 
the dislike and neglect confined themselves to ideas 
transported out of their own sphere, and meddling rashly 
with practice ; but they are inevitably extended to ideas 
as such, and to the whole life of intelligence ; practice is 
everything, a free play of the mind is nothing. The 
notion of the free play of the mind upon all subjects 
being a pleasure in itself, being an object of desire, being 
an essential provider of elements without which a nation's 
spirit, whatever compensations it may have for them, 
must, in the long run, die of inanition, hardly enters into 
an Englishman's thoughts. It is noticeable that the word 
curiosity, which in other languages is used in a good sense, 
to mean, as a high and fine quality of man's nature, just 
this disinterested love of a free play of the mind on all 
subjects, for its own sake, — it is noticeable, I say, that 
this word has in our language no sense of the kind, 
no sense but a rather bad and disparaging one. But 
criticism, real criticism, is essentially the exercise of this 
very quality ; it obeys an instinct prompting it to try to 
know the best that is known and thought in the world, 



1 6 THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM 

irrespectively of practice, politics, and everything of the 
kind ; and to value knowledge and thought as they 
approach this best, without the intrusion of any other 
considerations whatever. This is an instinct for which 
there is, I think, little original sympathy in the practical 
English nature, and what there was of it has undergone 
a long benumbing period of blight and suppression in 
the epoch of concentration which followed the French 
Revolution. 

But epochs of concentration cannot well endure for 
ever ; epochs of expansion, in the due course of things, 
follow them. Such an epoch of expansion seems to be 
opening in this country. In the first place all danger of 
a hostile forcible pressure of foreign ideas upon our 
practice has long disappeared; like the traveller in the 
fable, therefore, we begin to wear our cloak a little more 
loosely. Then, with a long peace, the ideas of Europe 
steal gradually and amicably in, and mingle, though in 
infmitesimally small quantities at a time, with our own 
notions. Then, too, in spite of all that is said about the 
absorbing and brutalising influence of our passionate 
material progress, it seems to me indisputable that this 
progress is likely, though not certain, to lead in the end 
to an apparition of intellectual life ; and that man, after 
he has made himself perfectly comfortable and has now 
to determine what to do with himself next, may begin to 
remember that he has a mind, and that the mind may be 
^made the source of great pleasure. I grant it is mainly 
the privilege of faith, at present, to discern this end to 
our railways, our business, and our fortune-making ; but 
we shall see if, here as elsewhere, faith is not in the end 



AT THE PRESENT TIME. 1 7 

the true prophet. Our ease, our travelling, and our 
unbounded liberty to hold just as hard and securely as 
we please to the practice to which our notions have given 
birth, all tend to beget an inclination to deal a little more 
freely with these notions themselves, to canvass them a 
little, to penetrate a little into their real nature. Flutter- 
ings of curiosity, in the foreign sense of the word, appear 
amongst us, and it is in these that criticism must look to 
find its account. Criticism first ; a time of true creative 
activity, perhaps, — which, as I have said, must inevitably 
be preceded amongst us by a time of criticism, — hereafter, 
when criticism has done its work. 

It is of the last importance that English criticism 
should clearly discern what rule for its course, in order 
to avail itself of the field now opening to it, and to pro- 
duce fruit for the future, it ought to take. The rule may 
be summed up in one word, — disinterestedness. And how 
is criticism to show disinterestedness ? By keeping aloof 
from practice ; by resolutely following the law of its own 
nature, which is to be a free play of the mind on all 
subjects which it touches; by steadily refusing to lend 
itself to any of those ulterior, political, practical con- 
siderations about ideas which plenty of people will be 
sure to attach to them, which perhaps ought often to be 
attached to them, which in this country at any rate are 
certain to be attached to them quite sufficiently, but 
which criticism has really nothing to do with. Its busi- 
ness is, as I have said, simply to know the best that is 
known and thought in the world, and by in its turn 
making this known, to create a current of true and fresh 
ideas. Its business is to do this with inflexible honesty, 

c 



1 8 THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM 

with due ability ; but its business is to do no more, and 
to leave alone all questions of practical consequences and 
applications, questions which will never fail to have due 
prominence given to them. Else criticism, besides being 
really false to its own nature, merely continues in the old 
rut which it has hitherto followed in this country, and 
will certainly miss the chance now given to it. For what 
is at present the bane of criticism in this country ? It is 
that practical considerations cling to it and stifle it; it 
subserves interests not its own ; our organs of criticism 
are organs of men and parties having practical ends to 
serve, and with them those practical ends are the first 
thing and the play of mind the second ; so much play of 
mind as is compatible with the prosecution of those prac- 
tical ends is all that is wanted. An organ like the Revue 
des Deux Mondes, having for its main function to under- 
stand and utter the best that is known and thought in 
the world, existing, it may be said, as just an organ for a 
free play of the mind, we have not; but we have the 
Edinburgh Review, existing as an organ of the old Whigs, 
and for as much play of mind as may suit its being that : 
we have the Quarterly Review, existing as an organ of 
the Tories, and for as much play of mind as may suit its 
being that ; we have the British Quarterly Review, exist- 
ing as an organ of the political Dissenters, and for as 
much play of mind as may suit its being that ; we have 
the Times, existing as an organ of the common, satisfied, 
well-to-do Englishman, and for as much play of mind as 
may suit its being that. And so on through all the 
various fractions, political and religious, of our society ; 
every fraction has, as such, its organ of criticism, but the 



AT THE PRESENT TIME. 1 9 

notion of combining all fractions in the common pleasure 
of a free disinterested play of mind meets with no favour. 
Directly this play of mind wants to have more scope, and 
to forget the pressure of practical considerations a little, 
it is checked, it is made to feel the chain ; we saw this 
the other day in the extinction, so much to be regretted, 
of the Home and Foreign Review ; perhaps in no organ 
of criticism in this country was there so much knowledge, 
so much play of mind ; but these could not save it : the 
Dublin Review subordinates play of mind to the prac- 
tical business of English and Irish Catholicism, and 
lives. It must needs be that men should act in sects 
and parties, that each of these sects and parties should 
have its organ, and should make this organ subserve the 
interests of its action ; but it would be well, too, that 
there should be a criticism, not the minister of these 
interests, not their enemy, but absolutely and entirely 
independent of them. No other criticism will ever attain 
any real authority or make any real way towards its end, 
— the creating a current of true and fresh ideas. 

It is because criticism has so little kept in the pure 
intellectual sphere, has so little detached itself from 
practice, has been so directly polemical and controver- 
sial, that it has so ill accomplished, in this country, its 
best spiritual work; which is to keep man from a self- 
satisfaction which is retarding and vulgarising, to lead 
him towards perfection, by making his mind dwell upon 
what is excellent in itself, and the absolute beauty and 
fitness of things. A polemical practical criticism makes 
men blind even to the ideal imperfection of their prac- 
tice, makes them willingly assert its ideal perfection, in 
c 2 



20 THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM 

order the better to secure it against attack ; and clearly 
this is narrowing and baneful for them. If they were 
reassured on the practical side, speculative considera- 
tions of ideal perfection they might be brought to 
entertain, and their spiritual horizon would thus gra- 
dually widen. Mr. Adderley says to the Warwickshire 
farmers : — 

" Talk of the improvement of breed ! Why, the race 
we ourselves represent, the men and women, the old 
Anglo-Saxon race, are the best breed in the whole world. 
. . . The absence of a too enervating climate, too un- 
clouded skies, and a too luxurious nature, has produced 
so vigorous a race of people, and has rendered us so 
superior to all the world." 
Mr. Roebuck says to the Sheffield cutlers : — 

" I look around me and ask what is the state of 
England ? Is not property safe ? Is not every man able 
to say what he likes ? Can you not walk from one end 
of England to the other in perfect security ? I ask you 
whether, the world over or in past history, there is any- 
thing like it? Nothing. I pray that our unrivalled 
happiness may last." 

Now obviously there is a peril for poor human nature 
in words and thoughts of such exuberant self-satisfaction, 
until we find ourselves safe in the streets of the Celestial 
City. . 

" Das wenige verschwindet leicht dem Blicke 
Der vorwarts sieht, wie viel noch iibrig bleibt — " 

says Goethe ; the little that is done seems nothing when 
we look forward and see how much we have yet to do. 



AT THE PRESENT TIME. 21 

Clearly this is a better line of reflection for weak humanity, 
so long as it remains on this earthly field of labour and 
trial. But neither Mr. Adderley nor Mr. Roebuck are 
by nature inaccessible to considerations of this sort. 
They only lose sight of them owing to the controversial 
life we all lead, and the practical form which all specu- 
lation takes with us. They have in view opponents 
whose aim is not ideal, but practical ; and in their zeal to 
uphold their own practice against these innovators, they 
go so far as even to attribute to this practice an ideal 
perfection. Somebody has been wanting to introduce a 
six-pound franchise, or to abolish church-rates, or to 
collect agricultural statistics by force, or to diminish local 
self-government. How natural, in reply to such pro- 
posals, very likely improper or ill-timed, to go a little 
beyond the mark, and to say stoutly, " Such a race of 
people as we stand, so superior to all the world ! The 
old Anglo-Saxon race, the best breed in the whole world ! 
I pray that our unrivalled happiness may last ! I ask 
you whether, the world over or in past . history, there is 
anything like it ! " And so long as criticism answers this 
dithyramb by insisting that the old Anglo-Saxon race 
would be still more superior to all others if it had no 
church-rates, or that our unrivalled happiness would last 
yet longer with a six-pound franchise, so long will the 
strain, " The best breed in the whole world ! " swell 
louder and louder, everything ideal and refining will be 
lost out of sight, and both the assailed and their critics 
will remain in a sphere, to say the truth, perfectly unvital, 
a sphere in which spiritual progression is impossible. 
But let criticism leave church-rates and the franchise 



2 2 THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM 

alone, and in the most candid spirit, without a single 
lurking thought of practical innovation, confront with our 
dithyramb this paragraph on which I stumbled in a news- 
paper soon after reading Mr. Roebuck : — 

" A shocking child murder has just been committed 
at Nottingham. A girl named Wragg left the workhouse 
there on Saturday morning with her young illegitimate 
child. The child was soon afterwards found dead on 
Mapperly Hills, having been strangled. Wragg is in 
custody." 

Nothing but that ; but, in juxtaposition with the absolute 
eulogies of Mr. Adderley and Mr. Roebuck, how elo- 
quent, how suggestive are those few lines ! " Our old 
Anglo-Saxon breed, the best in the whole world ! " — how 
much that is harsh and ill-favoured there is in this best 1 
Wragg! If we are to talk of ideal perfection, of " the 
best in the whole world," has any one reflected what a 
touch of grossness in our race, what an original short- 
coming in the more delicate spiritual perceptions, is 
shown by the natural growth amongst us of such hideous 
names, — Higginbottom, Stiggins, Bugg ! In Ionia and 
Attica they were luckier in this respect than " the best 
race in the world ; ' ' by the Ilissus there was no W ragg, 
poor thing ! And " our unrivalled happiness ;" — what 
an element of grimness, bareness, and hideousness mixes 
with it and blurs it; the workhouse, the dismal Map- 
perly Hills, — how dismal those who have seem them will 
remember ; — the gloom, the smoke, the cold, the strangled 
illegitimate child ! "I ask you whether, the world over 
or in past history, there is anything like it ? " Perhaps 
not, one is inclined to answer ; but at any rate, in that 



AT THE PRESENT TIME. 23 

case, the world is very much to be pitied. And the final 
touch, — short, bleak, and inhuman : Wragg is in custody. 
The sex lost in the confusion of our unrivalled happiness ; 
or (shall I say ?) the superfluous Christian name lopped off 
by the straightforward vigour of our old Anglo-Saxon 
breed ! There is profit for the spirit in such contrasts as 
this ; criticism serves the cause of perfection by esta- 
blishing them. By eluding ste rile conflict, by refusing to) 
remain in the sphere where alone narrow and relative < 
conceptions have any worth and validity, criticism may j 
diminish its momentary importance, but only in this way j 
has it a chance of gaining admittance for those wider and 
more perfect conceptions to which all its duty is really 
owed. Mr. Roebuck will have a poor opinion of an 
adversary who replies to his defiant songs of triumph 
only by murmuring under his breath, Wragg is in custody ; 
but in no other way will these songs of triumph be in- 
duced gradually to moderate themselves, to get rid of 
what in them is excessive and offensive, and to fall into 
a softer and truer key. 

It will be said that it is a very subtle and indirect 
action which I am thus prescribing for criticism, and that 
by embracing in this manner the Indian virtue of detach- 
ment and abandoning the sphere of practical life, it 
condemns itself to a slow and obscure work. Slow and 
obscure it may be, but it is the only proper work of 
criticism. The mass of mankind will never have any 
ardent zeal for seeing things as they are ; very inadequate 
ideas will always satisfy them. On these inadequate 
ideas reposes, and must repose, the general practice of 
the world. That is as much as saying that whoever sets 



24 THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM 

himself to see things as they are will find himself one of 
a very small circle ; but it is only by this small circle 
resolutely doing its own work that adequate ideas will 
ever get current at all. The rush and roar of practical 
life will always have a dizzying and attracting effect upon 
the most collected spectator, and tend to draw him into 
its vortex ; most of all will this be the case where that 
life is so powerful as it is in England. But it is only by 
remaining collected, and refusing to lend himself to the 
point of view of the practical man, that the critic can do 
the practical man any service ; and it is only by the 
greatest sincerity in pursuing his own course, and by at 
last convincing even the practical man of his sincerity, 
that he can escape misunderstandings which perpetually 
threaten him. 

For the practical man is not apt for fine distinctions, 
and yet in these distinctions truth and the highest culture 
greatly find their account. But it is not easy to lead a 
practical man — unless you reassure him as to your prac- 
tical intentions, you have no chance of leading him — to 
see that a thing which he has always been used to look 
at from one side only, which he greatly values, and which, 
looked at from that side, more than deserves, perhaps, all 
the prizing and admiring which he bestows upon it, — that 
this thing, looked at from another side, may appear much 
less beneficent and beautiful, and yet retain all its claims 
to our practical allegiance. Where shall we find lan- 
guage innocent enough, how shall we make the spotless 
purity of our intentions evident enough, to enable us to 
say to the political Englishman that the British Con- 
stitution itself, which, seen from the practical side, looks 



AT THE PRESENT TIME. 25 

such a magnificent organ of progress and virtue, seen 
from the speculative side, — with its compromises, its 
love of facts, its horror of theory, its studied avoidance 
of clear thoughts, — that, seen from this side, our august 
Constitution sometimes looks, — forgive me, shade of 
Lord Somers ! — a colossal machine for the manufacture 
of Philistines ? How is Cobbett to say this and not be 
misunderstood, blackened as he is with the smoke of a 
life-long conflict in the field of political practice ? how is 
Mr. Carlyle to say it and not be misunderstood, after his 
furious raid into this field with his Latter-day Pamphlets ? 
how is Mr. Ruskin, after his pugnacious political economy? 
I say, the critic must keep out of the region of immediate 
practice in the political, social, humanitarian sphere, if 
he wants to make a beginning for that more free specu- 
lative treatment of things, which may perhaps one day 
make its benefits felt even in this sphere, but in a natural 
and thence irresistible manner. 

Do what he will, however, the critic will still remain 
exposed to frequent misunderstandings, and nowhere so 
much as in this country. For here people are particu- 
larly indisposed even to comprehend that without this 
free disinterested treatment of things, truth and the 
highest culture are out of the question. So immersed are 
they in practical life, so accustomed to take all their 
notions from this life and its processes, that they are apt 
to think that truth and culture themselves can be reached 
by the processes of this life, and that it is an impertinent 
singularity to think of reaching them in any other? " We 
are all terra jilii" cries their eloquent advocate ; " all 
Philistines together. Away with the notion of pro- 



26 THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM 

ceeding by any other course than the course dear to the 
Philistines; let us have a social movement, let us organize 
and combine a party to pursue truth and new thought, 
let us call it the liberal party, and let us all stick to each 
other, and back each other up. Let us have no nonsense 
about independent criticism, and intellectual delicacy, 
and the few and the many; don't let us trouble our- 
selves about foreign thought ; we shall invent the whole 
thing for ourselves as we go along : if one of us speaks 
well, applaud him ; if one of us speaks ill, applaud him 
too ; we are all in the same movement, we are all liberals, 
we are all in pursuit of truth." In this way the pursuit 
of truth becomes really a social, practical, pleasurable 
affair, almost requiring a chairman, a secretary, and 
advertisements; with the excitement of an occasional 
scandal, with a little resistance to give the happy sense 
of difficulty overcome ; but, in general, plenty of bustle 
and very little thought. To act is so easy, as Goethe 
says ; to think is so hard ! It is true that the critic has 
many temptations to go with the stream, to make one of 
the party of movement, one of these terrce filii ; it seems 
ungracious to refuse to be a terra- filius, when so many 
excellent people are ; but the critic's duty is to refuse, 
or, if resistance is vain, at least to cry with Obermann : 
Pcrissons en resistant. 

How serious a matter it is to try and resist, I had 
ample opportunity of experiencing when I ventured some 
time ago to criticise the celebrated first volume of Bishop 
Colenso.* The echoes of the storm which was then 

* So sincere is my dislike to all personal attack and controversy, 
that I abstain from reprinting, at this distance of time from the 



AT THE PRESENT TIME. 27 

raised I still, from time to time, hear grumbling round 
me. That storm arose out of a misunderstanding almost 
inevitable. It is a result of no little culture to attain to 
a clear perception that science and religion are two 
wholly different things ; the multitude will for ever con- 
fuse them, but happily that is of no great real im- 
portance, for while the multitude imagines itself to live 
by its false science, it does really live by its true religion. 
Dr. Colenso, however, in his first volume did all he could 
to strengthen the confusion,* and to make it dangerous. 
He did this with the best intentions, I freely admit, and 
with the most candid ignorance that this was the natural 
effect of what he was doing ; but, says Joubert, " Igno- 
rance, which in matters of morals extenuates the crime, 
is itself, in intellectual matters, a crime of the first order." 
I criticised Bishop Colenso's speculative confusion. Im- 
mediately there was a cry raised : " What is this ? here 
is a liberal attacking a liberal. Do not you belong to 
the movement? are not you a friend of truth? Is not 

occasion which called them forth, the essays in which I criticised 
Dr. Colenso's book ; I feel bound, however, after all that has 
passed, to make here a final declaration of my sincere impenitence 
for having published them. Nay, I cannot forbear repeating yet 
once more, for his benefit and that of his readers, this sentence from 
my original remarks upon him : There is truth of science and truth 
nf religion ; truth of science does not become truth of religion till it is 
made religious. And I will add : Let us have all the science there 
is from the men of science ; from the men of religion let us have 
religion. 

* It has been said I make it " a crime against literary criticism 
and the higher culture to attempt to inform the ignorant." Need 
I point out that the ignorant are nut informed by being confirmed in 
a confusion ? 



2 5 THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM 

Bishop Colenso in pursuit of truth? then speak with 
proper respect of his book. Dr. Stanley is another friend 
of truth, and you speak with proper respect of his book ; 
why make these invidious differences? both books are 
excellent, admirable, liberal; Bishop Colenso's perhaps 
the most so, because it is the boldest, and will have the 
best practical consequences for the liberal cause. Do 
you want to encourage to the attack of a brother liberal 
his, and your, and our implacable enemies, the Church 
and State Review or the Record, — the High Church 
rhinoceros and the Evangelical hyaena? Be silent, 
therefore \ or rather speak, speak as loud as ever you 
can, and go into ecstasies over the eighty and odd 
pigeons." 

But criticism cannot follow this coarse and indiscrimi- 
nate method. It is unfortunately possible for a man in 
pursuit of truth to write a book which reposes upon a 
false conception. Even the practical consequences of a 
book are to genuine criticism no recommendation of it, if 
the book is, in the highest sense, blundering. I see that a 
lady who herself, too, is in pursuit of truth, and who 
writes with great ability, but a little too much, perhaps, 
under the influence of the practical spirit of the English 
liberal movement, classes Bishop Colenso's book and 
M. Renan's together, in her survey of the religious state of 
Europe, as facts of the same order, works, both of, them, 
of " great importance ;" " great ability, power, and skill ;" 
Bishop Colenso's, perhaps, the most powerful ; at least, 
Miss Cobbe gives special expression to her gratitude 
that to Bishop Colenso " has been given the strength to 
grasp, and the courage to teach, truths of such deep 



AT THE PRESENT TIME. 20. 

import." In the same way, more than one popular writer 
has compared him to Luther. Now it is just this kind 
of false estimate which the critical spirit is, it seems to 
me, bound to resist. It is really the strongest possible 
proof of the low ebb at which, in England, the critical 
spirit is, that while the critical hit in the religious 
literature of Germany is Dr. Strauss's book, in that of 
France M. Renan's book, the book of Bishop Colenso 
is the critical hit in the religious literature of England. 
Bishop Colenso's book reposes on a total misconcep- 
tion of the essential elements of the religious problem, 
as that problem is now presented for solution. To cri- 
ticism, therefore, which seeks to have the best that is 
known and thought on this problem, it is, however well 
meant, of no importance whatever. M. Renan's book 
attempts a new synthesis of the elements furnished to 
us by the Four Gospels. It attempts, in my opinion, a 
synthesis, perhaps premature, perhaps impossible, cer- 
tainly not successful. Up to the present time, at any 
rate, we must acquiesce in Fleury's sentence on such 
recastings of the Gospel story : Quiconque £ imagine la 
pouvoir mieux fa-ire, ne Tentend pas. M. Renan had 
himself passed by anticipation a like sentence on his 
own work, when he said : " If a new presentation of the 
character of Jesus were offered to me, I would not have 
it ; its very clearness would be, in my opinion, the best 
proof of its insufficiency." His friends may with perfect 
justice rejoin that at the sight of the Holy Land, and 
of the actual scene of the Gospel-story, all the current 
of M. Renan's thoughts may have naturally changed, 
and a new casting of that story irresistibly suggested 



30 THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM 

itself to him ; and that this is just a case for applying 
Cicero's maxim : Change of mind is not inconsistency — 
nemo doctus unquam mutationem consilii inconstantiam 
dixit esse. Nevertheless, for criticism, M. Renan's first 
thought must still be the truer one, as long as his new 
casting so fails more fully to commend itself, more fully 
(to use Coleridge's happy phrase about the Bible) to find 
us. Still M. Renan's attempt is, for criticism, of the 
most real interest and importance, since, with all its 
difficulty, a fresh synthesis of the New Testament data, — 
not a making war on them, in Voltaire's fashion, not a 
leaving them out of mind, in the world's fashion, but 
the putting a new construction upon them, the taking 
them from under the old, adoptive, traditional, un- 
spiritnal point of view and placing them under a new 
one, — is the very essence of the religious problem, as 
now presented ; and only by efforts in this direction can 
it receive a solution. 

Again, in the same spirit in which she judges Bishop 
Colenso, Miss Cobbe, like so many earnest liberals of 
our practical race, both here and in America, herself 
sets vigorously about a positive reconstruction of religion, 
about making a religion of the future out of hand, or at 
least setting about making it ; we must not rest, she and 
they are always thinking and saying, in negative criti- 
cism, we must be creative and constructive ; hence we 
have such works as her recent Religious Duty, and works 
still more considerable, perhaps, by others, which will 
be in every one's mind. These works often have much 
ability ; they often spring out of sincere convictions, 
and a sincere wish to do good ; and they sometimes, 



AT THE PRESENT TIME. 3 1 

perhaps, do good. Their fault is (if I may be permitted 
to say so) one which they have in common with the 
British College of Health, in the New Road. Every one 
knows the British College of Health ; it is that building 
with the lion and the statue of the Goddess Hygeia before 
it ; at least, I am sure about the lion, though I am not 
absolutely certain about the Goddess Hygeia. This 
building does credit, perhaps, to the resources of Dr. 
Morrison and his disciples ; but it falls a good deal 
short of one's idea of what a British College of Health 
ought to be. In England, where we hate public inter- 
ference and love individual enterprise, we have a whole 
crop of places like the British College of Health ; the 
grand name without the grand thing. Unluckily, credit- 
able to individual enterprise as they are, they tend to 
impair our taste by making us forget what more grandiose, 
noble, or beautiful character properly belongs to a public 
institution. The same may be said of the religions of 
the future of Miss Cobbe and others. Creditable, like 
the British College of Health, to the resources of their 
authors, they yet tend to make us forget what more 
grandiose, noble, or beautiful character properly belongs 
to religious constructions.- The historic religions, with 
all their faults, have had this ; it certainly belongs to the 
religious sentiment, when it truly flowers, to have this ; 
and we impoverish our spirit if we allow a religion of 
the future without it. What then is the duty of criticism 
here ? To take the practical point of view, to applaud 
the liberal movement and all its works, — its New Road 
religions of the future into the bargain, — for their general 
utility's sake ? By no means ; but to be perpetually 



32 THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM 

dissatisfied with these works, while they perpetually fall 
short of a high and perfect ideal. 

For criticism, these are elementary laws ; but they 
never can be popular, and in this country they have 
been very little followed, and one meets with immense 
obstacles in following them. That is a reason for assert- 
ing them again and again. Criticism must maintain its 
independence of the practical spirit and its aims. Even 
with well-meant efforts of the practical spirit it must 
express dissatisfaction, if in the sphere of the ideal they 
seem impoverishing and limiting. It must not hurry on 
to the goal because of its practical importance. It must 
be patient, and know how to wait; and flexible, and 
know how to attach itself to things and how to withdraw 
from them. It must be apt to study and praise elements 
that for the fulness of spiritual perfection are wanted, 
even though they belong to a power which in the prac- 
tical sphere may be maleficent. It must be apt to discern 
the spiritual shortcomings or illusions of powers that in 
the practical sphere may be beneficent. And this with- 
out any notion of favouring or injuring, in the practical 
sphere, one power or the other ; without any notion of 
playing off, in this sphere, one power against the other. 
When one looks, for instance, at the English Divorce 
Court, — an institution which perhaps has its practical 
conveniences, but which in the ideal sphere is so hideous ; 
an institution which neither makes divorce impossible 
nor makes it decent, which allows a man to get rid of 
his wife, or a wife of her husband, but makes them drag 
one another first, for the public edification, through a 
mire of unutterable infamy, — when one looks at this 



AT THE PRESENT TIME. 33 

charming institution, I say, with its crowded benches, 
its newspaper-reports, and its money-compensations, this 
institution in which the gross unregenerate British Philis- 
tine has indeed stamped an image of himself, — one may 
be permitted to find the marriage-theory of Catholicism 
refreshing and elevating. Or when Protestantism, in 
virtue of its supposed rational and intellectual origin, 
gives the law to criticism too magisterially, criticism may 
and must remind it that its pretensions, in this respect, 
are illusive and do it harm ; that the Reformation was 
a moral rather than an intellectual event ; that Luther's 
theory of grace no more exactly reflects the mind of the 
spirit than Bossuet's philosophy of history reflects it; 
and that there is no more antecedent probability of the 
Bishop of Durham's stock of ideas being agreeable to 
perfect reason than of Pope Pius the Ninth's. But 
criticism will not on that account forget the achievements 
of Protestantism in the practical and moral sphere ; nor 
that, even in the intellectual sphere, Protestantism, though 
in a blind and stumbling manner, carried forward the 
Renaissance, while Catholicism threw itself violently 
across its path. 

I lately heard a man of thought and energy contrasting 
the want of ardour and movement which he now found 
amongst young men in this country with what he re- 
membered in his own youth, twenty years ago. " What 
reformers we were then ! " he exclaimed ; " what a zeal 
we had ! how we canvassed every institution in Church 
and State, and were prepared to remodel them all on 
first principles ! " He was inclined to regret, as a spiritual 
flagging, the lull which he saw. I am disposed rather to 

D 



34 THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM 

regard it as a pause in which the turn to a new mode 
of spiritual progress is being accomplished. Everything 
was long seen, by the young and ardent amongst us, 
in inseparable connection with politics and practical 
life ; we have pretty well exhausted the benefits of 
seeing things in this connection, we have got all that 
can be got by so seeing them. Let us try a more dis- 
interested mode of seeing them ; let us betake ourselves 
more to the serener life of the mind and spirit. This 
life, too, may have its excesses and dangers ; but they 
are not for us at present. Let us think of quietly 
enlarging our stock of true and fresh ideas, and not, 
as soon as we get an idea or half an idea, be running 
out with it into the street, and trying to make it rule 
there. Our ideas will, in the end, shape the world all 
the better for maturing a little. Perhaps in fifty years' 
time it will in the English House of Commons be an 
objection to an institution that it is an anomaly, and my 
friend the Member of Parliament will shudder in his 
grave. But let us in the meanwhile rather endeavour 
that in twenty years' time it may, in English literature, 
be an objection to a proposition that it is absurd. 
That will be a change so vast, that the imagination 
almost fails to grasp it. Ab i?itegro scedoi'um nascitur 
ordo. 

If I have insisted so much on the course which 
criticism must take where politics and religion are con- 
cerned, it is because, where these burning matters are 
in question, it is most likely to go astray. I have 
wished, above all, to insist on the attitude which criticism 
should adopt towards everything : on its right tone and 



AT THE PRESENT TIME. 35 

temper of mind. Then comes the question as to the 
subject-matter which criticism should most seek. Here, 
in general, its course is determined for it by the idea 
which is the law of its being ; the idea of a disinterested 
endeavour to learn and propagate the best that is known 
and thought in the world, and thus to establish a current 
of fresh and true ideas. By the very nature of things, 
as England is not all the world, much of the best that is 
known and thought in the world cannot be of English 
growth, must be foreign ; by the nature of things, again, 
it is just this that we are least likely to know, while 
English thought is streaming in upon us from all sides 
.and takes excellent care that we shall not be ignorant o£( 
its existence ; the English critic, therefore, must dwell 
much on foreign thought, and with particular heed on 
any part of it, which, while significant and fruitful in 
itself, is for any reason specially likely to escape him. | 
Again, judging is often spoken of as the critic's one/ 
business ; and so in some sense it is ; but the judgment 
which almost insensibly forms itself in a fair and clear 
mind, along with fresh knowledge, is the valuable one ; 
and thus knowledge, and ever fresh knowledge, must be 
the critic's great concern for himself; and it is by com- 
municating fresh knowledge, and letting his own judg- 
ment pass along with it, — but insensibly, and in the 
second place not the first, as a sort of companion and. 
clue, not as an abstract lawgiver, — that he will generally 
do most good to his readers. Sometimes, no doubt, for 
the sake of establishing an author's place in literature, 
and his relation to a central standard, (and if this is not 
done, how are we to get at our best in the world?) 
D 2 



36 THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM 

criticism may have to deal with a subject-matter so 
familiar that fresh knowledge is out of the question, and 
then it must be all judgment ; an enunciation and de- 
tailed application of principles. Here the great safe- 
guard is never to let oneself become abstract, always to 
retain an intimate and lively consciousness of the truth 
of what one is saying, and, the moment this fails us, to 
be sure that something is wrong. Still, under all cir- 
cumstances, this mere judgment and application of 
principles is, in itself, not the most satisfactory work 
to the critic ; like mathematics, it is tautological, and 
cannot well give us, like fresh learning, the sense of 
creative activity. 

But stop, some one will say ; all this talk is of no 
practical use to us whatever ; this criticism of yours is 
not what we have in our minds when we speak of cri- 
ticism; when we speak of critics and criticism, we mean 
critics and criticism of the current English literature of 
the day ; when you offer to tell criticism its function, it 
is to this criticism that we expect you to address yourself. 
I am sorry for it, for I am afraid I must disappoint these 
expectations. I am bound by my own definition of cri- 
ticism : a disinterested endeavour to learn and propagate 
the best that is known and thought in the world. How 
much of current English literature comes into this " best 
that is known and thought in the world"? Not very 
much, I fear ; certainly less, at this moment, than of the 
current literature of France or Germany. Well, then, 
am I to alter my definition of criticism, in order to meet 
the requirements of a number of practising English critics, 
who, after all, are free in their choice of a business ? That 






AT THE PRESENT TIME. 37 

would be making criticism lend itself just to one of those 
alien practical considerations, which, I have said, are so 
fatal to it. One may say, indeed, to those who have to 
deal with the mass — so much better disregarded — of 
current English literature, that they may at all events 
endeavour, in dealing with this, to try it, so far as they 
can, by the standard of the best that is known and thought 
in the world ; one may say, that to get anywhere near 
this standard, every critic should try and possess one great 
literature, at least, besides his own ; and the more unlike 
his own, the better. But, after all, the criticism I am 
really concerned with, — the criticism which alone can 
much help us for the future, the criticism which, through- 
out Europe, is at the present day meant, when so much 
stress is laid on the importance of criticism and the 
critical spirit, — is a criticism which regards Europe as 
being, for intellectual and spiritual purposes, one great 
confederation, bound to a joint action and working to a 
common result ; and whose members have, for their 
proper outfit, a knowledge of Greek, Roman, and Eastern 
antiquity, and of one another. Special, local, and tempo- 
rary advantages being put out of account, that modern 
nation will in the intellectual and spiritual sphere make 
most progress, which most thoroughly carries out this 
programme. And what is that but saying that we too, 
all of us, as individuals, the more thoroughly we carry 
it out, shall make the more progress ? 

There is so much inviting us ! — what are we to take ? 
what will nourish us in growth towards perfection ? That 
is the question which, with the immense field of life and of 
literature lying before him, the critic has to answer ; for 



38 THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM, 

himself first, and afterwards for others. In this idea of the 
critic's business the essays brought together in the following 
pages have had their origin ; in this idea, widely different 
as are their subjects, they have, perhaps, their unity. 

I conclude with what I said at the beginning : to have 
the sense of creative activity is the great happiness and 
the great proof of being alive, and it is not denied to 
criticism to have it ; but then criticism must be sincere, 
simple, flexible, ardent, ever widening its knowledge. 
Then it may have, in no contemptible measure, a joyful 
sense of creative activity ; a sense which a man of 
insight and conscience will prefer to what he might 
derive from a poor, starved, fragmentary, inadequate 
creation. And at some epochs no other creation is 
possible. 

Still, in full measure, the sense of creative activity 
belongs only to genuine creation ; in literature we must 
never forget that. But what true man of letters ever 
can forget it ? It is no such common matter for a gifted 
nature to come into possession of a current of true and 
living ideas, and to produce amidst the inspiration of 
them, that we are likely to underrate it. The epochs of 
iEschylus and Shakspeare make us feel their pre- 
eminence. In an epoch like those is, no doubt, the 
true life of a literature ; there is the promised land, 
towards which criticism can only beckon. That pro- 
mised land it will not be ours to enter, and we shall 
die in the wilderness : but to have desired to enter it, to 
have saluted it from afar, is already, perhaps, the best 
distinction among contemporaries ; it will certainly be 
the best title to esteem with posterity. 



[ 39 ] 



THE LITERARY INFLUENCE OF ACADEMIES. 

It is impossible to put down a book like the history of 
the French Academy, by Pellisson and D'Olivet, which 
M. Charles Livet has lately re-edited, without being led 
to reflect upon the absence, in our own country, of any 
institution like the French Academy, upon the probable 
causes of this absence, and upon its results. A thousand 
voices will be ready to tell us that this absence is a signal 
mark of our national superiority ; that it is in great part 
owing to this absence that the exhilarating words of Lord 
Macaulay, lately given to the world by his very clever 
nephew, Mr. Trevelyan, are so profoundly true : " It may 
safely be said that the literature now extant in the English 
language is of far greater value than all the literature 
which three hundred years ago was extant in all the 
languages of the world together." I daresay this is so ; 
only, remembering Spinoza's maxim that the two great 
banes of humanity are self-conceit and the laziness coming 
from self-conceit, I think it may do us good, instead of 
resting in our pre-eminence with perfect security, to look 
a little more closely why this is so, and whether it is so 
without any limitations. 

But first of all I must give a very few words to the 
outward history of the French Academy. About the year 



40 THE LITERARY INFLUENCE OF ACADEMIES. 

1629, seven or eight persons in Paris, fond of literature, 
formed themselves into a sort of little club to meet at 
one another's houses and discuss literary matters. Their 
meetings got talked of, and Cardinal Richelieu, then 
minister and all powerful, heard of them. He himself 
had a noble passion for letters, and for all fine culture ; 
he was interested by what he heard of the nascent society. 
Himself a man in the grand style, if ever man was, he 
•had the insight to perceive what a potent instrument 
of the grand style was here to his hand. It was the 
beginning of a great century for France, the seventeenth ; 
men's minds were working, the French language was 
-forming. Richelieu sent to ask the members of the new 
society whether they would be willing to become a body 
■with a public character, holding regular meetings. Not 
without a little hesitation, — for apparently they found 
themselves very well as they were, and these seven or 
eight gentlemen of a social and literary turn were not 
perfectly at their ease as to what the great and terrible 
minister could want with them, — they consented. The 
favours of. a man like Richelieu are not easily refused, 
-whether they are honestly meant or no ; but this favour 
of Richelieu's was meant quite honestly. The Parliament, 
however, had its doubts of this. The Parliament had 
none of Richelieu's enthusiasm about letters and culture ; 
it was jealous of the. apparition of a new public body in 
the State ; above all, of a body called into existence by 
Richelieu. The King's letters patent, establishing and 
authorizing the new society, were granted early in 1635 > 
but, by the old constitution of France, these letters patent 
required the verification of the Parliament. It was two 



THE LITERARY INFLUENCE OF ACADEMIES. 41 

years and a half, — towards the autumn of 1637, — before 
the Parliament would give it ; and it then gave it only 
after pressing solicitations, and earnest assurances of the 
innocent intentions of the young Academy. Jocose 
people said that this society, with its mission to purify 
and embellish the language, filled with terror a body of 
lawyers like the French Parliament, the stronghold of 
barbarous jargon and of chicane. 

This improvement of the language was in truth the 
declared grand aim for the operations of the Academy. 
Its statutes of foundation, approved by Richelieu before 
the royal edict establishing it was issued, say expressly : 
" The Academy's principal function shall be to work with 
all the care and all the diligence possible at giving sure 
rules to our language, and rendering it pure, eloquent, 
and capable of treating the arts and sciences." This 
zeal for making a nation's great instrument of thought, 
— its language, — correct and worthy, is undoubtedly 
a sign full of promise, a weighty earnest of future 
power. It is said that Richelieu had it in his mind that 
French should succeed Latin in its general ascendency, 
as Latin had succeeded Greek ; if it was so, even this 
wish has to some extent been fulfilled. But, at any rate, 
the ethical influences of style in language, — its close 
relations, so often pointed out, with character, — are most 
important. Richelieu, a man of high culture, and, at 
the same time, of great character, felt them profoundly ; 
and that he should have sought to regularise, strengthen, 
and perpetuate them by an institution for perfecting 
language, is alone a striking proof of his governing spirit 
and of his genius. 



42 THE LITERARY INFLUENCE OF ACADEMIES. 

This was not all he had in his mind, however. The 
new Academy, now enlarged to a body of forty members,! ' 
and meant to contain all the chief literary men of France, 
was to be a literary tribunal. The works of its members 
were to be brought before it previous to publication, 
were to be criticised by it, and finally, if it saw fit, to be 
published with its declared approbation. The works of 
other writers, not members of the Academy, might also, 
at the request of these writers themselves, be passed 
under the Academy's review. Besides this, in essays 
and discussions the Academy examined and judged 
works already published, whether by living or dead 
authors, and literary matters in general. The celebrated 
opinion on Corneille's Cid, delivered in 1637 by the 
Academy at Richelieu's urgent request, when this poem, 
which strongly occupied public attention, had been at- 
tacked by M. de Scudery, shows how fully Richelieu 
designed his new creation to do duty as a supreme court 
of literature, and how early it in fact began to exercise 
this function. One* who had known Richelieu declared, 
after the Cardinal's death, that he had projected a yet 
greater institution than the Academy, a sort of grand 
European college of art, science, and literature, a Pry- 
taneum, where the chief authors of all Europe should 
be gathered together in one central home, there to live 
in security, leisure, and honour; — that was a dream 
which will not bear to be pulled about too roughly. But 
the project of forming a high court of letters for France 
was no dream ; Richelieu in great measure fulfilled it. 
This is what the Academy, by its idea, really is j this is 
* La Mesnardiere. 



THE LITERARY INFLUENCE OF ACADEMIES. 43 

what it has always tended to become ; this is what it 
has, from time to time, really been ; by being, or tending 
to be this, far more than even by what it has done for 
the language, it is of such importance in France. To 
give the law, the tone to literature, and that tone a high 
one, is its business. " Richelieu meant it," says M. Sainte- 
Beuve, " to be a haut jury" — a jury the most choice 
and authoritative that could be found on all important 
literary matters in question before the public ; to be, as- 
it in fact became in the latter half of the eighteenth 
century, " a sovereign organ of opinion." " The duty 
of the Academy is," says M. Renan, " maintenir la deli- 
catesse de l' esprit frangais" — to keep the fine quality of 
the French spirit unimpaired ; it represents a kind of 
" maitrise en fait de bo?i ton'''' — the authority of a recog- 
nised master in matters of tone and taste. " All ages," 
says M. Renan again, " have had their inferior literature ; 
but the great danger of our time is that this inferior 
literature tends more and more to get the upper place. 
No one has the same advantage as the Academy for 
fighting against this mischief;" the Academy, which, as 
he says elsewhere, has even special facilities for "creating 
a form of intellectual culture which shall impose itself on 
all around." M. Sainte-Beuve and M. Renan are, both 
of them, very keen-sighted critics ; and they show it 
signally by seizing and putting so prominently forward 
this character of the French Academy. 

Such an effort to set up a recognised authority, im- 
posing on us a high standard in matters of intellect and 
taste, has many enemies in human nature. We all of us. 
like to go our own way, and not to be forced out of the. 



44 THE LITERARY INFLUENCE OF ACADEMIES. 

atmosphere of commonplace habitual to most of us ; — 
"was tins alle bandigt," says Goethe, "das Genuine? We 
like to be suffered to lie comfortably in the old straw 
of our habits, especially of our intellectual habits, even 
though this straw may not be very clean and fine. But 
if the effort to limit this freedom of our lower nature 
finds, as it does and must find, enemies in human nature, 
it finds also auxiliaries in it. Out of the four great parts, 
says Cicero, of the honestum, or good, which forms the 
matter on which officium, or human duty, finds employ- 
ment, one is the fixing of a modus and an or do, a measure 
and an order, to fashion and wholesomely constrain our 
action, in order to lift it above the level it keeps if 
left to itself, and to bring it nearer to perfection. Man - 
alone of living creatures, he says, goes feeling after 
" quid sit ordo, quid sit quod deceat, in factis dictisque 
qui modus " — the discovery of an order ; a law of good 
taste, a measure for his words and actions. Other crea- 
tures submissively follow the law of their nature ; man 
alone has an impulse leading him to set up some 
other law to control the bent of his nature. 

This holds good, of course, as to moral matters, as well 
as intellectual matters : and it is of moral matters that 
we are generally thinking when we affirm it. But it holds 
good as to intellectual matters too. Now, probably, 
M. Sainte-Beuve had not these words of Cicero in his 
mind when he made, about the French nation, the 
assertion I am going to quote ; but, for all that, the 
assertion leans for support, one may say, upon the truth 
conveyed in those words of Cicero, and wonderfully 
illustrates and confirms them. " In France," says M. 



THE LITERARY INFLUENCE OF ACADEMIES. 45 

Sainte-Beuve, " the first consideration for us is not 
whether we are amused and pleased by a work of art or 
mind, nor is it whether we are touched by it. What we 
seek above all to learn is, whether we were right in being 
amused with it, and in applauding it, and in being 
moved by it." Those are very remarkable words, and 
they are, I believe, in the main quite true. A French- 
man has, to a considerable degree, what one may call 
a conscience in intellectual matters ; he has an active 
belief that there is a right and a wrong in them, that he 
is bound to honour and obey the right, that he is dis- 
graced by cleaving to the wrong. All the world has, or 
professes to have, this conscience in moral matters. The 
word conscience has become almost confined, in popular 
use, to the moral sphere, because this lively susceptibility 
of feeling is, in the moral sphere, so far more common 
than in the intellectual sphere ; the livelier, in the moral 
sphere, this susceptibility is, the greater becomes a 
man's readiness to admit a high standard of action, an 
ideal authoritatively correcting his everyday moral habits ; 
here, such willing admission of authority is due to sen- 
sitiveness of conscience. And a like deference to a 
standard higher than one's own habitual standard in 
intellectual matters, a like respectful recognition of a 
superior ideal, is caused, in the intellectual sphere, by 
sensitiveness of intelligence. Those whose intelligence 
is quickest, openest, most sensitive, are readiest with this 
deference ; those whose intelligence is less delicate and 
sensitive are less disposed to it. Well, now we are on 
the road to see why the French have their Academy and 
we have nothing of the kind. 



46 THE LITERARY INFLUENCE OF ACADEMIES. 

What are the essential characteristics of the spirit of 
our nation ? Not, certainly, an open and clear mind, 
not a quick and flexible intelligence. Our greatest 
admirers would not claim for us that we have these in 
a pre-eminent degree ; they might say that we had more 
of them than our detractors gave us credit for ; but they 
would not assert them to be our essential characteristics. 
They would rather allege, as our chief spiritual charac- 
teristics, energy and honesty; and, if we are judged 
favourably and positively, not invidiously and negatively, 
our chief characteristics are, no doubt, these; — energy 
and honesty, not an open and clear mind, not a quick 
and flexible intelligence. Openness of mind and flexi- 
bility of intelligence were very signal characteristics of 
the Athenian people in ancient times ; everybody will 
feel that. Openness of mind and flexibility of intelli- 
gence are remarkable characteristics of the French 
people in modern times ; at any rate, they strikingly 
characterise them as compared with us; I think every- 
body, or almost everybody, will feel that. I will not now 
ask what more the Athenian or the French spirit has 
than this, nor what shortcomings either of them may 
Iiave as a set-off against this ; all I want now to point 
out is that they have this, and that we have it in a much 
lesser degree. 

Let me remark, however, that not only in the moral 
sphere, but also in the intellectual and spiritual sphere, 
energy and honesty are most important and fruitful 
qualities ; that, for instance, of what we call genius, 
•energy is the most essential part. So, by assigning 
to a nation energy and honesty as its chief spiritual 



THE LITERARY INFLUENCE OF ACADEMIES. 47 

characteristics, — by refusing to it, as at all eminent cha- 
racteristics, openness of mind and flexibility of intelli- 
gence, — we do not by any means, as some people might 
at first suppose, relegate its importance and its power 
of manifesting itself with effect from the intellectual to 
the moral sphere. We only indicate its probable special 
line of successful activity in the intellectual sphere, and, 
it is true, certain imperfections and failings to which, in 
this sphere, it will always be subject. Genius is mainly 
an affair of energy, and poetry is mainly an affair of 
genius ; therefore, a nation whose spirit is characterised 
by energy may well be eminent in poetry ; — and we have 
Shakspeare. Again, the highest reach of science is, one 
may say, an inventive power, a faculty of divination, akin 
to the highest power exercised in poetry ; therefore, a 
nation whose spirit is characterised by energy may well 
be eminent in science ; — and we have Newton. Shak- 
speare and Newton : in the intellectual sphere there can 
be no higher names. And what that energy, which is 
the life of genius, above everything demands and insists 
upon, is freedom ; entire independence of all authority, 
prescription, and routine, — the fullest room to expand as 
it will. Therefore, a nation whose chief spiritual charac- 
teristic is energy, will not be very apt to set up, in intel- 
lectual matters, a fixed standard, an authority, like an 
academy. By this it certainly escapes certain real incon- 
veniences and dangers, and it can, at the same time, as 
we have seen, reach undeniably splendid heights in 
poetry and science. On the other hand, some of the 
requisites of intellectual work are specially the affair of 
quickness of mind and flexibility of intelligence. The 



48 THE LITERARY INFLUENCE OF ACADEMIES. 

form, the method of evolution, the precision, the propor- 
tions, the relations of the parts to the whole, in an intel- 
lectual work, depend mainly upon them. And these are 
the elements of an intellectual work which are really 
most communicable from it, which can most be learned 
and adopted from it, which have, therefore, the greatest 
effect upon the intellectual performance of others. Even 
in poetry, these requisites are very important ; and the 
poetry of a nation, not eminent for the gifts on which 
they depend, will, more or less, suffer by this short- 
coming. In poetry, however, they are, after all, se- 
condary, and energy is the first thing ; but in prose they 
are of first-rate importance. In its prose literature, there- 
fore, and in the routine of intellectual work generally, a 
nation with no particular gifts for these will not be so 
successful. These are what, as I have said, can to a 
certain degree be learned and appropriated, while the 
free activity of genius cannot. Academies consecrate 
and maintain them, and, therefore, a nation with an 
eminent turn for them naturally establishes academies. 
So far as routine and authority tend to embarrass energy 
and inventive genius, academies may be said to be 
obstructive to energy and inventive genius, and, to this 
extent, to the human spirit's general advance. But then 
this evil is so much compensated by the propagation, 
on a large scale, of the mental aptitudes and demands 
which an open mind and a flexible intelligence naturally 
engender, genius itself, in the long run, so greatly finds 
its account in this propagation, and bodies like the 
French Academy have such power for promoting it, 
that the general advance of the human spirit is perhaps, 



THE LITERARY INFLUENCE OF ACADEMIES. 49 

on the' whole, rather furthered than impeded by their 
existence. 

How much greater is our nation in poetry than prose ! 
how much better, in general, do the productions of its 
spirit show in the qualities of genius than in the qualities 
of intelligence ! One may constantly remark this in the 
work of individuals ; how much more striking, in general, 
does any Englishman, — of some vigour of mind, but by 
no means a poet, — seem in his verse than in his prose ! 
No doubt his verse suffers from the same defects which 
impair his prose, and he cannot express himself with 
real success in it ; but how much more powerful a per- 
sonage does he appear in it, by dint of feeling, and of 
originality and movement of ideas, than when he is 
writing prose ! With a Frenchman of like stamp, it is 
just the reverse : set him to write poetry, he is limited, 
artificial, and impotent ; set him to write prose, he is 
free, natural, and effective. The power of French litera- 
ture is in its prose-writers, the power of English literature 
is in its poets. Nay, many of the celebrated French 
poets depend wholly for their fame upon the qualities of 
intelligence which they exhibit, — qualities which are the 
distinctive support of prose ; many of the celebrated 
English prose-writers depend wholly for their fame upon 
the qualities of genius and imagination which they exhibit, 
— qualities which are the distinctive support of poetry. 
But, as I have said, the qualities of genius are less trans- 
ferable than the qualities of intelligence ; less can be 
immediately learned and appropriated from their product ; 
they are less direct and stringent intellectual agencies, 
though they may be more beautiful and divine. Shak- 

E 



50 THE LITERARY INFLUENCE OF ACADEMIES. 

speare and our great Elizabethan group were certainly- 
more gifted writers than Corneille and his group; but 
what was the sequel to this great literature, this literature 
of genius, as we may call it, stretching from Marlow to 
Milton ? What did it lead up to in English literature ? 
To our provincial and second-rate literature of the 
eighteenth century. What, on the other hand, was the 
sequel to the literature of the French " great century," 
to this literature of intelligence, as, by comparison with 
our Elizabethan literature, we may call it ; what did it 
lead up to ? To the French literature of the eighteenth 
century, one of the most powerful and pervasive intel- 
lectual agencies that have ever existed, the greatest 
European force of the eighteenth century. In science, 
again, we had Newton, a genius of the very highest order, 
a type of genius in science, if ever there was one. On 
the continent, as a sort of counterpart to Newton, there 
was Leibnitz ; a man, it seems to me (though on these 
matters I speak under correction), of much less creative 
energy of genius, much less power of divination than 
Newton, but rather a man of admirable intelligence, a 
type of intelligence in science, if ever there was one. 
Well, and what did they each directly lead up to in 
science ? What was the intellectual generation that sprang 
from each of them ? I only repeat what the men of 
science have themselves pointed out. The man of genius 
was continued by the English analysts of the eighteenth 
century, comparatively powerless and obscure followers 
of the renowned master ; the man of intelligence was 
continued by successors like Bernouilli, Euler, Lagrange, 
and Laplace, the greatest names in modern mathematics, 



THE LITERARY INFLUENCE OF ACADEMIES. 5 1 

What I want the reader to see is, that the question as 
to the utility of academies to the intellectual life of a 
nation is not settled when we say, for instance : " Oh, we 
have never had an academy, and yet we have, confessedly, 
a very great literature." It still remains to be asked : 
" What sort of a great literature ? a literature great in the 
special qualities of genius, or great in the special qualities 
of intelligence ? " If in the former, it is by no means 
sure that either our literature, or the general intellectual 
life of our nation, has got already, without" academies, all 
that academies can give. Both the one and the other 
may very well be somewhat wanting in those qualities of 
intelligence, out of a lively sense for which a body like 
the French Academy, as I have said, springs, and which 
such a body does a great deal to spread and confirm. 
Our literature, in spite of the genius manifested in it, 
may fall short in form, method, precision, proportions, 
arrangement, — all of them, I have said, things where 
intelligence proper comes in. It may be comparatively 
weak in prose, that branch of literature where intelli- 
gence proper is, so to speak, all in all. In this branch 
it may show many grave faults to which the want -of 
a quick, flexible intelligence, and of the strict standard 
which such an intelligence tends to impose, makes it 
liable ; it may be full of hap-hazard, crudeness, pro- 
vincialism, eccentricity, violence, blundering. It may 
be a less stringent and effective intellectual agency, 
both upon our own nation and upon the world at large, 
than other literatures which show less genius, perhaps, 
but more intelligence. 

The right conclusion certainly is that we should try, 
e 2 






52 THE LITERARY INFLUENCE OF ACADEMIES. 

so far as we can, to make up our shortcomings ; and that 
to this end, instead of always fixing our thoughts upon 
the points in which our literature, and our intellectual 
life generally, are strong, we should, from time to time, 
fix them upon those in which they are weak, and so 
learn to perceive clearly what we have to amend. What 
is our second great spiritual characteristic,- — our honesty, 
— good for, if it is not good for this? But it will, — 
I am sure it will, — more and more, as time goes on, 
be found good for this. 

Well, then,, an institution like the French Academy, — 
an institution owing its existence to a national bent to- 
wards the things of the mind, towards culture, towards 
clearness, correctness, and propriety in thinking and 
speaking, and, -in its turn, promoting this bent, — sets 
standards in a number of directions, and creates, in all 
these directions, a force of educated opinion, checking 
and rebuking those who fall below these standards, or 
who set them at nought. Educated opinion exists here 
as in France ; but in France the Academy serves as a 
sort of centre and rallying-point to it, and gives it a 
force which it has not got here. Why is all the journey- 
man-work of literature, as I may call it, so much worse 
done here than it is in France? I do not wish to hurt 
any one's feelings ; but surely this is so. Think of the 
difference between our books of reference and those of 
the French, between our biographical dictionaries (to 
take a striking instance) and theirs; think of the dif- 
ference between the translations of the classics turned 
out for Mr. Bonn's library and those turned out for 
M. Nisard's collection ! As a general rule, hardly any 



THE LITERARY INFLUENCE OF ACADEMIES. 53 

one amongst us, who knows French and German well, 
would use an English book of reference when he could 
get a French or German one ; or would look at an 
English prose translation of an ancient author when he 
could get a French or German one. It is not that there 
do not exist in England, as in France, a number of 
people perfectly well able to discern what is good, in 
these things, from what is bad, and preferring what is 
good ; but they are isolated, they form no powerful 
body of opinion, they are not strong enough to set a 
standard, up to which even the journeyman work of 
literature must be brought, if it is to be vendible. 
Ignorance and charlatanism in work of this kind are- 
always trying to pass off their wares as excellent, and to 
cry down criticism as the voice of an insignificant, over- 
fastidious minority; they easily persuade the multitude 
that this is so when the minority is scattered about as it 
is here ; not so easily when it is banded together as in 
the French Academy. So, agajn, with freaks in dealing 
with language ; certainly all such freaks tend to impair 
the power and beauty of language ; and how far more 
common they are with us than with the French ! To 
take a very familiar instance. Every one has noticed 
the way in which the Times chooses to spell the word 
" diocese ;" it always spells it dioce^,* deriving it, I 
suppose, from Zeus and census. The Journal des Debats 
might just as well write " diocess " instead of " diocese," 
but imagine the Journal des Debats doing so ! Imagine 
an educated Frenchman indulging himself in an ortho- 

* The Times has now (1868) abandoned this spelling and adopted 
the ordinary one. 



54 THE LITERARY INFLUENCE OF ACADEMIES. 

graphical antic of this sort, in face of the grave respect 
with which the Academy and its dictionary invest the 
French language ! Some people will say these are little 
things ; they are not ; they are of bad example. They 
tend to spread the baneful notion that there is no such 
thing as a high, correct standard in intellectual matters ; 
that every one may as well take his own way ; they are 
at variance with the severe discipline necessary for all 
real culture ; they confirm us in habits of wilfulness and 
eccentricity, which hurt our minds, and damage our 
credit with serious people. The late Mr. Donaldson 
was certainly a man of great ability, and I, who am not 
an Orientalist, do not pretend to judge his Jashar; but 
let the reader observe the form which a foreign Orien- 
talist's judgment of it naturally takes. M. Renan calls 
it a tentative malheureuse, a failure, in short ; this it may 
be, or it may not be ; I am no judge. But he goes on : 
"It is astonishing that a recent article " (in a French 
periodical, he means) " should have brought forward as 
the last word of German exegesis a work like this, 
composed by a doctor of the University of Cambridge, 
and universally condemned by German critics." You 
see what he means to imply : an extravagance of this 
sort could never have come from Germany, where there 
is a great force of critical opinion controlling a learned 
man's vagaries, and keeping him straight ; it comes from 
the native home of intellectual eccentricity of all kinds,* 

* A critic declares I am wrong in saying that M. Renan's language 
implies this. I still think that there is a shade, a nuance of expres- 
sion, in M. Renan's language, which does imply this ; but, I confess, 
the only person who can really settle such a question is M. Renan 
himself. 



THE LITERARY INFLUENCE OF ACADEMIES. 55 

— from England, from a doctor of the University of 
Cambridge ;— and I daresay he would not expect much 
better things from a doctor of the University of Oxford. 
Again, after speaking of what Germany and France 
have done for the history of Mahomet : " America and 
England," M. Renan goes on, " have also occupied 
themselves with Mahomet." He mentions Washington 
Irving's "Life of Mahomet," which does not, he says, 
evince much of an historical sense, a se?itiment historique 
fort eleve ; " but," he proceeds, " this book shows a real 
progress, when one thinks that in 1829 Mr. Charles 
Forster published two thick volumes, which enchanted 
the English reverends, to make out that Mahomet was 
the little horn of the he-goat that figures in the eighth 
chapter of Daniel, and that the Pope was the great 
horn. Mr. Forster founded on this ingenious parallel a 
whole philosophy of history, according to which the 
Pope represented the Western corruption of Christianity, 
and Mahomet the Eastern ; thence the striking resem- 
blances between Mahometanism and Popery." And in 
a note M. Renan adds : " This is the same Mr. Charles 
Forster who is the author of a mystification about the 
Sinaitic inscriptions, in which he declares he finds the 
primitive language." As much as to say: "It is an 
Englishman, be surprised at no extravagance." If these 
innuendoes had no ground, and were made in hatred 
and malice, they would not be worth a moment's attention ; 
but they come from a grave Orientalist, on his own 
subject, and they point to a real fact ; — the absence, in 
this country, of any force of educated literary and 
scientific opinion, making aberrations like those of the 



56 THE LITERARY INFLUENCE OF ACADEMIES. 

author of The One Primeval Language out of the 
question. Not only the author of such aberrations, often 
a very clever man, suffers by the want of check, by the 
not being kept straight, and spends force in vain on a 
false road, which, under better discipline, he might have 
used with profit on a true one ; but all his adherents, 
both "reverends" and others, suffer too, and the general 
rate of information and judgment is in this way kept low. 
In a production which we have all been reading lately, 
a production stamped throughout with a literary quality 
very rare in this country, and of which I shall have a 
word to say presently, — urbanity ; in this production, the 
work of a man never to be named by any son of Oxford 
without sympathy, a man who alone in Oxford of his 
generation, alone of many generations, conveyed to us 
in his genius that same charm, that same ineffable senti- 
ment which this exquisite place itself conveys, — I mean 
Dr. Newman, — an expression is frequently used which is 
more common in theological than in literary language, 
but which seems to me fitted to be of general service ; 
the note of so and so, the note of catholicity, the note of 
antiquity, the note of sanctity, and so on. Adopting this 
expressive word, I say that in the bulk of the intellectual 
work of a nation which has no centre, no intellectual 
metropolis like an academy, like M. Sainte-Beuve's 
"sovereign organ of opinion," like M. Renan's "re- 
cognised authority in matters of tone and taste," — there 
is observable a note of provinciality. Now to get rid of 
provinciality is a certain stage of culture ; a stage the 
positive result of which we must not make of too much 
importance, but which is, nevertheless, indispensable j 



THE LITERARY INFLUENCE OF ACADEMIES. 57 

for it brings us on to the platform where alone the best 
and highest intellectual work can be said fairly to begin. 
Work done after men have reached this platform is 
classical; and that is the only work which, in the long run, 
can stand. All the scoria in the work of men of great 
genius who have not lived on this platform, are due to 
their not having lived on it. Genius raises them to it by 
moments, and the portions of their work which are 
immortal are done at these moments ; but more of it 
would have been immortal if they had not reached this 
platform at moments only, if they had had the culture 
which makes men live there. 

The less a literature has felt the influence of a supposed j 
centre of correct information, correct judgment, correct \ 
taste, the more we shall find in it this note of provin- | 
ciality. I have shown the note of provinciality as caused 
by remoteness from a centre of correct information. Of 
course, the note of provinciality from the want of a centre 
of correct taste is still more visible, and it is also still 
more common. For here great — even the greatest — 
powers of mind most fail a man. Great powers of mind 
will make him inform himself thoroughly, great powers 
of mind will make him think profoundly, even with 
ignorance and platitude all round him; but not even 
great powers of mind will keep his taste and style per- , 
fectly sound and sure, if he is left too much to himself, 
with no " sovereign organ of opinion," in these matters, 
near him. Even men like Jeremy Taylor and Burke 
suffer here. Take this passage from Taylor's funeral 
sermon on Lady Carbery : — 

"So have I seen a river, deep and smooth, passing 



5o THE LITERARY INFLUENCE OF ACADEMIES. 

with a still foot and a sober face, and paying to the Jiscus, 
the great exchequer of the sea, a tribute large and full ; 
and hard by it, a little brook, skipping and making a 
noise upon its unequal and neighbour bottom; and after 
all its talking and bragged motion, it paid to its common 
audit no more than the revenues of a little cloud or a 
contemptible vessel : so have I sometimes compared the 
issues of her religion to the solemnities and famed out- 
sides of another's piety." 

That passage has been much admired, and, indeed, the 
genius in it is undeniable. I should say, for my part, 
that genius, the ruling divinity of poetry, had been too 
busy in it, and intelligence, the ruling divinity of prose, 
not busy enough. But can any one, with the best models 
of style in his head, help feeling the note of provinciality 
there, the want of simplicity, the want of measure, the 
want of just the qualities that make prose classical ? If 
he does not feel what I mean, let him place beside the 
passage of Taylor this passage from the Panegyric of 
St. Paul, by Taylor's contemporary, Bossuet : — 

" II ira, cet ignorant dans l'art de bien dire, avec cette 
locution rude, avec cette phrase qui sent l'etranger, il ira 
en cette Grece polie, la mere des philosophes et des 
•orateurs ; et malgre la resistance du monde, il y etablira 
plus d'Eglises que Platon n'y a gagne de disciples par 
■cette eloquence qu'on a crue divine." 

There we have prose without the note of provinciality, 
— classical prose, prose of the centre. 

Or take Burke, our greatest English prose-writer, as I 
think ; take expressions like this : — 

" Blindfold themselves, like bulls that shut their eyes 



THE LITERARY INFLUENCE OF ACADEMIES. 59 

when they push, they drive, by the point of their bayonets, 
their slaves, blindfolded, indeed, no worse than their 
lords, to take their fictions for currencies, and to swallow 
down paper pills by thirty-four millions sterling at a dose." 

Or this :— 

" They used it " (the royal name) " as a sort of navel- 
string, to nourish their unnatural offspring from the bowels 
of royalty itself. Now that the monster can purvey for 
its own subsistence, it will only carry the mark about it, 
as a token of its having torn the womb it came from." 

Or this :— 

" Without one natural pang, he " (Rousseau) " casts 
away, as a sort of offal and excrement, the spawn of his 
disgustful amours, and sends his children to the hospital 
of foundlings." 

Or this :— 

" I confess, I never liked this continual talk of resist- 
ance and revolution, or the practice of making the extreme 
medicine of the constitution its daily bread. It renders 
the habit of society dangerously valetudinary; it is taking 
periodical doses of mercury sublimate, and swallowing 
down repeated provocatives of cantharides to our love of 
liberty." 

I say that is extravagant prose ; prose too much 
suffered to indulge its caprices ; prose at too great a 
distance from the centre of good taste ; prose, in short, 
with the note of provinciality. People may reply, it is 
rich and imaginative; yes, that is just it, it is Asiatic 
prose, as the ancient critics would have said ; prose 
somewhat barbarously rich and overloaded. But the true 
prose is Attic prose. 



60 THE LITERARY INFLUENCE OF ACADEMIES. 

Well, but Addison's prose is Attic prose. Where, then, 
it may be asked, is the note of provinciality in Addison ? 
I answer, in the commonplace of his ideas.* This is a 
matter worth remarking. Addison claims to take leading 
rank as a moralist. To do that, you must have ideas of 
the first order on your subject, — the best ideas, at any 
rate, attainable in your time, — as well as be able to 
express them in a perfectly sound and sure style. Else 
you show your distance from the centre of ideas by your 
matter; you are provincial by your matter, though you 
may not be provincial by your style. It is comparatively 
a small matter to express oneself well, if one will be 
content with not expressing much, with expressing only 
trite ideas ; the problem is to express new and profound 
ideas in a perfectly sound and classical style. He is the 
true classic, in every age, who does that. Now Addison 
has not, on his subject of morals, the force of ideas of 
the moralists of the first class, — the classical moralists ; 

* A critic says this is paradoxical, and urges that many second- 
rate French academicians have uttered the most commonplace ideas 
possible. I agree that many second-rate French academicians have 
uttered the most commonplace ideas possible ; but Addison is 
not a second-rate man. He is a man of the order, I will not say of 
Pascal, but at any rate of La Bruyere and Vauvenargues ; why 
does he not equal them ? I say, because of the medium in which 
he finds himself, the atmosphere in which he lives and works; 
an atmosphere which tells unfavourably, or rather fends to tell 
unfavourably (for that is the truer way of putting it) either upon 
style or else upon ideas ; tends to make even a man of great ability 
either a Mr. Carlyle or else a Lord Macaulay. 

It is to be observed, however, that Lord Macaulay's style has in 
its turn suffered by his failure in ideas, and this cannot be said of 
Addison's. 






THE LITERARY INFLUENCE OF ACADEMIES. 6 1 

he has not the best ideas attainable in or about his time, 
and which were, so to speak, in the air then, to be seized 
by the finest spirits ; he is not to be compared for power, 
searchingness, or delicacy of thought, to Pascal, or La 
Bruyere, or Vauvenargues ; he is rather on a level, in 
this respect, with a man like Marmontel ; therefore, I 
say, he has the note of provinciality as a moralist ; he is 
provincial by his matter, though not by his style. 

To illustrate what I mean by an example. Addison, 
writing as a moralist on fixedness in religious faith, 
says : — 

" Those who delight in reading books of controversy 
do very seldom arrive at a fixed and settled habit of 
faith. The doubt which was laid revives again, and 
shows itself in new difficulties; and that generally for 
this reason, — because the mind, which is perpetually 
tossed in controversies and disputes, is apt to forget the 
reasons which had once set it at rest, and to be dis- 
quieted with any former perplexity when it appears in 
a new shape, or is started by a different hand." 

It may be said, that is classical English, perfect in 
lucidity, measure, and propriety. I make no objec- 
tion ; but, in my turn, I say that the idea expressed is 
perfectly trite and barren, and that it is a note of pro- 
vinciality in Addison, in a man whom a nation puts 
forward as one of its great moralists, to have no pro- 
founder and more striking idea to produce on this great 
subject. Compare, on the same subject, these words 
of a moralist really of the first order, really at the centre 
by his ideas, — Joubert : — 

" L'experience de beaucoup d'opmions donne a l'esprit 



62 THE LITERARY INFLUENCE OF ACADEMIES. 

beaucoup de flexibility et l'affermit dans celles qu'il 
croit les meilleures." 

With what a flash of light that touches the subject ! 
how it sets us thinking ! what a genuine contribution to 
moral science it is ! 

In short, where there is no centre like an academy, if 
you have genius and powerful ideas, you are apt not to 
have the best style going ; if you have precision of style 
and not genius, you are apt not to have the best ideas 
going. 

The provincial spirit, again, exaggerates the value of 
its ideas for want of a high standard at hand by which 
to try them. Or rather, for want of such a standard, it 
gives one idea too much prominence at the expense of 
others ; it orders its ideas amiss ; it is hurried away by 
fancies; it likes and dislikes too passionately, too ex- 
clusively. Its admiration weeps hysterical tears, and its 
disapprobation foams at the mouth. So we get the erup- 
tive and the aggressive manner in literature ; the former 
prevails most in our criticism, the latter in our news- 
papers. For, not having the lucidity of a large and 
centrally placed intelligence, the provincial spirit has not 
its graciousness ; it does not persuade, it makes war ; 
it has not urbanity, the tone of the city, of the centre, 
the tone which always aims at a spiritual and intellectual 
effect, and not excluding the use of banter, never dis- 
joins banter itself from politeness, from felicity. But the 
provincial tone is more violent, and seems to aim rather 
at an effect upon the blood and senses than upon the 
spirit and intellect; it loves hard-hitting rather than 
persuading. The newspaper, with its party spirit, its 



THE LITERARY INFLUENCE OF ACADEMIES. 63 

thorough-goingness, its resolute avoidance of shades 
and distinctions, its short, highly-charged, heavy-shotted, 
articles, its style so unlike that style /em's minimeque per- 
tinax — easy and not too violently insisting, — which the 
ancients so much admired, is its true literature ; the 
provincial spirit likes in the newspaper just what makes 
the newspaper such bad food for it, — just what made 
Goethe say, when he was pressed hard about the im- 
morality of Byron's poems, that, after all, they were not 
so immoral as the newspapers. The French talk of the 
brutalite des jonmaux anglais. What strikes them 
comes from the necessary inherent tendencies of news- 
paper-writing not being checked in England by any 
centre of intelligent and urbane spirit, but rather stimu- 
lated by coming in contact with a provincial spirit. Even 
a newspaper like the Saturday Review, that old friend 
of all of us, a newspaper expressly aiming at an immunity 
from the common newspaper-spirit, aiming at being a 
sort of organ of reason, — and, by thus aiming, it merits 
great gratitude and has done great good, — even the 
Saturday Review, replying to some foreign criticism on 
our precautions against invasion, falls into a strain of 
this kind : — 

"To do this" (to take these precautions) "seems to 
us eminently worthy of a great nation, and to talk of it 
as unworthy of a great nation, seems to us eminently 
worthy of a great fool." 

There is what the French mean when they talk of the 
brutalite des journaux anglais ; there is a style certainly 
as far removed from urbanity as possible, — a style with 
what I call the note of provinciality. And the same 



64 THE LITERARY INFLUENCE OF ACADEMIES. 

note may not unfrequently be observed even in the ideas 
of this newspaper, full as it is of thought and cleverness : 
certain ideas allowed to become fixed ideas, to prevail 
too absolutely. I will not speak of the immediate 
present, but, to go a little while back, it had the critic 
who so disliked the Emperor of the French ; it had the 
critic who so disliked the subject of my present remarks 
— academies ; it had the critic who was so fond of the 
German element in our nation, and, indeed, everywhere ; 
who ground his teeth if one said Charlemagne, instead 
of Charles the Great, and, in short, saw all things in 
Teutonism, as Malebranche saw all things in God. Cer- 
tainly any one may fairly find faults in the Emperor 
Napoleon or in academies, and merit in the German 
element ; but it is a note of the provincial spirit not to 
hold ideas of this kind a little more easily, to be so 
devoured by them, to suffer them to become crotchets. 

In England there needs a miracle of genius like Shak- 
speare's to produce balance of mind, and a miracle of 
intellectual delicacy like Dr. Newman's to produce 
urbanity of style. How prevalent all round us is the 
want of balance of mind and urbanity of style ! How 
much, doubtless, it is to be found in ourselves, — in each 
of us ! but, as human nature is constituted, ever}- one can 
see it clearest in his contemporaries. There, above all, 
we should consider it, because they and we are exposed 
to the same influences ; and it is in the best of one's con- 
temporaries that it is most worth considering, because 
one then most feels the harm it does, when one sees 
what they would be without it. Think of the difference 
between Mr. Ruskin exercising his genius, and Mr. Ruskin 



THE LITERARY INFLUENCE OF ACADEMIES. 65 

exercising his intelligence ; consider the truth and beauty 
of this : — 

" Go out, in the spring-time, among the meadows that 
slope from the shores of the Swiss lakes to the roots of 
their lower mountains. There, mingled with the taller 
gentians and the white narcissus, the grass grows deep 
and free ; and as you follow the winding mountain paths, 
beneath arching boughs all veiled and dim with blossom, 
— paths that for ever droop and rise over the green banks 
and mounds sweeping down in scented undulation, steep 
to the blue water, studded here and there with new-mown 
heaps, filling all the air with fainter sweetness, — look, up 
towards the higher hills, where the- waves of everlasting 
green roll silently into their long inlets among the shadows 
of the pines " ' 

There is what the genius, the feeling, the temperament 
in Mr. Ruskin, the original and incommunicable part, 
has to do with ; and how exquisite it is ! All the critic 
could possibly suggest, in the way of objection, would be, 
perhaps, that Mr. Ruskin is there trying to make prose 
do more than it can perfectly do ; that what he is there 
attempting he will never, except in poetry, . be able to 
accomplish to his own entire satisfaction : but he accom- 
plishes so much that the critic may well hesitate to 
suggest even this. Place beside this charming passage 
another, — a passage about Shakspeare's names, where the 
intelligence and judgment of Mr. Ruskin, the acquired, 
trained, communicable part in him,, are brought into play, 
— and see the difference : — 

" Of Shakspeare's names I will afterwards speak at 
more length; they are curiously — often barbarously — 



66 THE LITERARY INFLUENCE OF ACADEMIES. 

mixed out of various traditions and languages. Three 
of the clearest in meaning have been already noticed. 
Desdemona — ' Svo-Sat^ov/a,' miserable fortune — is also 
plain enough. Othello is, I believe, ' the careful ;' all 
the calamity of the tragedy arising from the single flaw 
and error in his magnificently collected strength. Ophelia, 
' serviceableness,' the true, lost wife of Hamlet, is marked 
as having a Greek name by that of her brother, Laertes : 
and its signification is once exquisitely alluded to in that 
brother's last word of her, where her gentle preciousness 
is opposed to the uselessness of the churlish clergy : — 
' A ministering --angel shall my sister be, when thou liest 
howling.' Hamlet is, I believe, connected in some way 
with ' homely,' the entire event of the tragedy turning on 
betrayal of home duty. Hermione (sp/ua), ' pillar-like ' 
(>; elSos eye yjpvar\<; ' Acppo^hrjs) ', Titania (tlttJi'tj), ' the 
queen'; Benedict and Beatrice, ' blessed and blessing'; 
Valentine and Proteus, ' enduring or strong' (valens), 
and ' changeful' Iago and Iachimo have evidently the 
same root — probably the Spanish Iago, Jacob, ' the 
supplanter.' " 

Now, really, what a piece of extravagance all that is ! 
I will not say that the meaning of Shakspeare's names 
(I put aside the question as to the correctness of Mr. 
Ruskin's etymologies) has no effect at all, may be entirely 
lost sight of; but to give it that degree of prominence is 
to throw the reins to one's whim, to forget all modera- 
tion and proportion, to lose the balance of one's mind 
altogether. It is to show in one's criticism, to the highest 
excess, the note of provinciality. 

Again, there is Mr. Palgrave, certainly endowed with a 



THE LITERARY INFLUENCE OF ACADEMIES. 67 

very fine critical tact ; his Golden Treasury abundantly 
proves it. The plan of arrangement which he devised 
for that work, the mode in which he followed his plan 
out, nay, one might even say, merely the juxtaposition, 
in pursuance of it, of two such pieces as those of Words- 
worth and Shelley which form the 285th and 286th in 
his collection, show a delicacy of feeling in these matters 
which is quite indisputable and very rare. And his notes 
are full of remarks which show it too. All the more 
striking, conjoined with so much justness of perception, 
are certain freaks and violences in Mr. Palgrave's criticism, 
mainly imputable, I think, to the critic's isolated position 
in this country, to his feeling himself too much left to 
take his own way, too much without any central authority 
representing high culture and sound judgment, by which 
he may be, on the one hand, confirmed as against the 
ignorant, on the other, held in respect when he himself 
is inclined to take liberties. I mean such things as this 
note on Milton's line, — 

" The great Emathian conqueror bade spare" . . . 

u When Thebes was destroyed, Alexander ordered the 
house of Pindar to be spared. He was as incapable of 
appreciating the poet as Louis XIV. of appreciating Racine ; 
but even the narrow and barbarian mind of Alexander 
could imderstand the advantage of a showy act of homage 
to poetry. ," A note like that I call a freak or a violence ; 
if this disparaging view of Alexander and Louis XIV., so 
unlike the current view, is wrong, — if the current view 
is, after all, the truer one of them, — the note is a freak. 
But, even if its disparaging view is right, the note is a 
f 2 



68 THE LITERARY INFLUENCE OF ACADEMIES. 

violence ; for, abandoning the true mode of intellectual 
action — persuasion, the instilment of conviction, — it 
simply astounds and irritates the hearer by contradicting 
without a word of proof or preparation, his fixed and 
familiar notions ; and this is mere violence. In either 
case, the fitness, the measure, the centrality, which is the 
soul of all good criticism, is lost, and the note of provinci- 
ality shows itself. 

Thus in the famous Handbook, marks of a fine power 
of perception are everywhere discernible, but so, too, 
are marks of the want of sure balance, of the check 
and support afforded by knowing one speaks before 
good and severe judges. When Mr. Palgrave dislikes 
a thing, he feels no pressure constraining him either 
to try his dislike closely or to express it moderately ; he 
does not mince matters, he gives his dislike all its own 
way ; both his judgment and his style would gain if he 
were under more restraint. " The style which has filled 
London with the dead monotony of Gower or Harley 
Streets, or the pale commonplace of Belgravia, Tyburnia 
and Kensington ; which has pierced Paris and Madrid 
with the feeble frivolities of the Rue Rivoli and the Strada 
de Toledo." He dislikes the architecture of the Rue 
Rivoli, and he puts it on a level with the architecture of 
Belgravia and Gower Street ; he lumps them all together 
in one condemnation, he loses sight of the shade, the 
distinction, which is everything here ; the distinction, 
namely, that the architecture of the Rue Rivoli expresses 
show, splendour, pleasure, — unworthy things, perhaps, to 
express alone and for their own sakes, but it expresses 
them ; whereas the architecture of Gower Street and 



THE LITERARY INFLUENCE OF ACADEMIES, 69 

Belgravia merely expresses the impotence of the architect 
to express anything. Then, as to style : " sculpture 
which stands in a contrast with Woolner hardly more 
shameful than diverting," . . . " passing from Davy or 
Faraday to the art of the mountebank or the science of 
the spirit-rapper." . . . " it is the old, old story with 
Marochetti, the frog trying to blow himself out to bull 
dimensions. He may puff and be puffed, but he will 
never do it." We all remember that shower of amenities 
on poor M. Marochetti. Now, here Mr. Palgrave himself 
enables us to form a contrast which lets us see just what 
the presence of an academy does for style ; for he quotes 
a criticism by M. Gustave Planche on this very M. Maro- 
chetti. M. Gustave Planche was a critic of the very first 
order, a man of strong opinions, which he expressed with 
severity ; he, too, condemns M. Marochetti's work, and 
Mr. Palgrave calls him as a witness to back what he has 
himself said ; certainly Mr. Palgrave's translation will not 
exaggerate M. Planche's urbanity in dealing with M. 
Marochetti, but, even in this translation, see the difference 
in sobriety, in measure, between the critic writing in Paris 
and the critic writing in London : — 

" These conditions are so elementary, that I am at a 
perfect loss to comprehend how M. Marochetti has 
neglected them. There are soldiers here like the leaden 
playthings of the nursery : it is almost impossible to guess 
whether there is a body beneath the dress. We have 
here no question of style, not even of grammar \ it is 
nothing beyond mere matter of the alphabet of art. To 
break these conditions is the same as to be ignorant of 
spelling." 



70 THE LITERARY INFLUENCE OF ACADEMIES. 

That is really more formidable criticism than Mr, 
Palgrave's, and yet in how perfectly temperate a stylet 
M. Planche's advantage is, that he feels himself to be 
speaking before competent judges, that there is a force of 
cultivated opinion for him to appeal to. Therefore, he 
must not be extravagant, and he need not storm; he 
must satisfy the reason and taste, — that is his business. 
Mr. Palgrave, on the other hand, feels himself to be 
speaking before a promiscuous multitude, with the few 
good judges so scattered through it as to be powerless ; 
therefore, he has no calm confidence and no self-control ; 
he relies on the strength of his lungs ; he knows that big 
words impose on the mob, and that, even if he is out- 
rageous, most of his audience are apt to be a great deal 
more so.* 

Again, the first two volumes of Mr. Kinglake's 
Invasion of the Crimea were certainly among the most 
successful and renowned English books of our time. 
Their style was one of the most renowned things about 
them, and yet how conspicuous a fault in Mr. Kinglake's 
style is this over-charge of which I have been speaking ! 
Mr. James Gordon Bennett, of the New York Herald, 
says, I believe, that the highest achievement of the 
human intellect is what he calls " a good editorial." 
This is not quite so; but, if it were so, on what a 
height would these two volumes by Mr. Kinglake stand ! 
I have already spoken of the Attic and the Asiatic 
styles ; besides these, there is the Corinthian style. 

* When I wrote this I had before me the first edition of Mr. Pal- 
grave's Handbook. I am bound to say that in the second edition much 
strong language has been expunged, and what remains, softened. 



THE LITERARY INFLUENCE OF ACADEMIES. 7 I 

That is the style for " a good editorial," and Mr. King- 
lake has really reached perfection in it. It has not the 
warm glow, blithe movement] and soft pliancy of life, as 
the Attic style has ; it has not the over-heavy richness 
and encumbered gait of the Asiatic style ; it has glitter 
without warmth, rapidity without ease, effectiveness 
without charm. Its characteristic is, that it has no soul; 
all it exists for, is to get its ends, to make its points, to 
damage its adversaries, to be admired, to triumph. A 
style so bent on effect at the expense of soul, simplicity, 
and delicacy ; a style so little studious of the charm of 
the great models ; so far from classic truth and grace, 
must surely be said to have the note of provinciality. 
Yet Mr. Kinglake's talent is a really eminent one, and 
so in harmony with our intellectual habits and tenden- 
cies, that, to the great bulk of English people, the faults 
of his style seem its merits ; all the more needful that 
criticism should not be dazzled by them, but should try 
closely this, the form of his work. The matter of the work 
is a separate thing ■ and, indeed, this has been, I believe, 
withdrawn from discussion, Mr. Kinglake declaring that 
this must and shall stay as it is, and that he is resolved, 
like Pontius Pilate, to stand by what he has written. 
And here, I must say, he seems to me to be quite right. 
On the breast of the huge Mississippi of falsehood called 
history, a foam-bell more or less is of no consequence. 
But he may, at any rate, ease and soften his style. 

We must not compare a man of Mr. Kinglake's literary 
talent with French writers like M. de Bazancourt. We 
must compare him with M. Thiers. And what a supe- 
riority in style has M. Thiers from being formed in a 



72 THE LITERARY INFLUENCE OF ACADEMIES. 

good school, with severe traditions, wholesome restraining 
influences ! Even in this age of Mr. James Gordon Ben- 
nett, his style has nothing Corinthian about it, its light- 
ness and brightness make it almost Attic. It is not quite 
Attic, however ; it has not the infallible sureness of 
Attic taste. Sometimes his head gets a little hot with 
the fumes of patriotism, and then he crosses the line, he 
loses perfect measure, he declaims, he raises a momentary 
smile. France condemned " a etre 1'erTroi du monde dont 
elle pourrait etre V amour" — Cassar, whose exquisite 
simplicity M. Thiers so much admires, would not have 
written like that. There is, if I may be allowed to say 
so, the slightest possible touch of fatuity in such lan- 
guage, — of that failure in good sense which comes from 
too warm a self-satisfaction. But compare this language 
with Mr. Kinglake's Marshal St. Arnaud — " dismissed 
from the presence" of Lord Raglan or Lord Stratford, 
" cowed and pressed down" under their " stern reproofs," 
or under " the majesty of the great Elchi's Canning 
brow and tight, merciless lips ! " The failure in good 
sense and good taste there reaches far beyond what the 
French mean by fatuity ; they would call it by another 
word, a word expressing blank defect of intelligence, a 
word for which we have no exact equivalent in English, — 
bete. It is the difference between a venial, momentary, 
good-tempered excess, in a man of the world, of an 
amiable and social weakness, — vanity ; and a serious, 
settled, fierce, narrow, provincial misconception of the 
whole relative value of one's own things and the things 
of others. So baneful to the style of even the cleverest 
man may be the total want of checks. 



THE LITERARY INFLUENCE OF ACADEMIES. 73 

In all I have said, I do not pretend that the examples 
given prove my rule as to the influence of academies ; 
they only illustrate it. Examples in plenty might very 
likely be found to set against them ; the truth of the rule 
depends, no doubt, on whether the balance of all the 
examples is in its favour or not ) but actually to strike this 
balance is always out of the question. Here, as every- 
where else, the rule, the idea, if true, commends itself to 
the judicious, and then the examples make it clearer still 
to them. This is the real use of examples, and this alone 
is the purpose which I have meant mine to serve. There 
is also another side to the whole question, — .as to the 
limiting and prejudicial operation which academies may 
have ; but this side of the question it rather behoves the 
French, not us, to study. 
- — The reader will ask for some practical conclusion about 
the establishment of an Academy in this country, and 
perhaps I shall hardly give him the one he expects. But 
nations have their own modes of acting, and these modes 
are not easily changed; they are even consecrated, when 
great things have been done in them. When a literature 
has produced Shakspeare and Milton, when it has even 
produced Barrow and Burke, it cannot well abandon its 
traditions ; it can hardly begin, at this late time of day, 
with an institution like the French Academy. I think 
academies with a limited, special, scientific scope, in the 
various lines of intellectual work, — academies like that of 
Berlin, for instance, — we with time may, and probably 
shall, establish. And no doubt they will do good ; no 
doubt the presence of such influential centres of correct 
information will tend to raise the standard amongst us 






74 THE LITERARY INFLUENCE OF ACADEMIES. 

for what I have called the journey wian-ivork of literature, 
and to free us from the scandal of such biographical 
dictionaries as Chalmers's, or such translations as a 
recent one of Spinoza, or perhaps, such philological 
freaks as Mr. Forster's about the one primeval language. 
But an academy quite like the French Academy, a 
sovereign organ of the highest literary opinion, a recog- 
nised authority in matters of intellectual tone and taste, 
Ave shall hardly have, and perhaps we ought not to wish 
to have it. But then every one amongst us with any turn 
for literature will do well to remember to what short- 
comings and excesses, which such an academy tends to 
correct, we. are liable; and the more liable, of course, 
for not having it. He will do well constantly to try 
himself in respect of these, steadily to widen his culture, 
severely to check in himself the provincial spirit ; and he 
will do this the better the more he keeps in mind that all 
mere glorification by ourselves of ourselves or our litera- 
ture, in the strain of what, at the beginning of these 
remarks, I quoted from Lord Macaulay, is both vulgar, 
and, besides being vulgar, retarding. 



[ 75 I 



MAURICE DE GUERIN. 

I will not presume to say that I now know the French 
language well ; but at a time when I knew it even less 
well than at present, — some fifteen years ago, — I re- 
member pestering those about me with this sentence, 
the rhythm of which had lodged itself in my head, and 
which, with the strangest pronunciation possible, I kept 
perpetually declaiming : " Les dieux jaloux ont enfold 
quelque part les thnoignages de la descendajice des choses ; 
mats an bord de quel Ocean ont-ils roule la pierre qui 
les couvre, o Ma car eel" 

These words come from a short composition called 
the Centaur, of which the author, Georges-Maurice de 
Guerin, died in the year 1839, at the age of twenty- 
eight, without having published anything. In 1840, 
Madame Sand brought out the Centaur in the Revue 
des Deux Mondes, with a short notice of its author, and a 
few extracts from his letters. A year or two afterwards 
she reprinted these at the end of a volume of her novels ; 
and there it was that I fell in with them. I was so much 
struck with the Centaur that I waited anxiously to hear 
something more of its author, and of what he had left ; 
but it was not till the other day — twenty years after the 
first publication of the Centaur in the Revue des Deux 



76 MAURICE DE GUERIN. 

Mondes, that my anxiety was satisfied. At the end of 
i860 appeared two volumes with the title, Maurice de 
Guerin, Reliquice, containing the Centaur, several poems 
of Guerin, his journals, and a number of his letters, col- 
lected and edited by a devoted friend, M. Trebutien, and 
preceded by a notice of Guerin by the first of living 
critics, M. Sainte-Beuve. 

The grand power of poetry is its interpretative power ; 
by which I mean, not a power of drawing out in black 
and white an explanation of the mystery of the universe, 
but the power of so dealing with things as to awaken in 
us a wonderfully full, new, and intimate sense of them, 
and of our relations with them. When this sense is 
awakened in us, as to objects without us, we feel ourselves 
to be in contact with the essential nature of those objects, 
to be no longer bewildered and oppressed by them, but 
to have their secret, and to be in harmony with them ; 
and this feeling calms and satisfies us as no other can. 
Poetry, indeed, interprets in another way besides this ; 
but one of its two ways of interpreting, of exercising its 
highest power, is by awakening this sense in us. I will 
not now inquire whether this sense is illusive, whether it 
can be proved not to be illusive, whether it does abso- 
lutely make us possess the real nature of things ; all I 
say is, that poetry can awaken it in us, and that to 
awaken it is one of the highest powers of poetry. The 
interpretations of science do not give us this intimate 
sense of objects as the interpretations of poetry give it; 
they appeal to a limited faculty, and not to the whole 
man. It is not Linnaeus, or Cavendish, or Cuvier who 
gives us the true sense of animals, or water, or plants, 



MAURICE DE GUERIN. 77 

who seizes their secret for us, who makes us participate 
in their life ; it is Shakspeare, with his 

"daffodils 
That come before the swallow dares, and take 
The winds of March with beauty ; " 

it is Wordsworth, with his 

" voice . . . heard 
In spring-time from the cuckoo-bird, 
Breaking the silence of the seas 
Among the farthest Hebrides ; " 

it is Keats, with his 

" moving waters at their priestlike task 
Of cold ablution round Earth's human shores ; " 

it is Chateaubriand, with his " dime indetenninee des forets ; 
it is Senancour, with his mountain birch-tree : " Cetieecorce 
blanche, lisse et crevassee ; cette tige agreste ; ces branches 
qui finclinent vers la terre ; la mobilite des feuilles, et tout 
cet abandon, siinplicite de la nature, attitude des deserts." 

Eminent manifestations of this magical power of poetry- 
are very rare and very precious: the compositions of 
Guerin manifest it, I think, in singular eminence. Not 
his poems, strictly so called, — his verse, — so much as his 
prose; his poems in general take for their vehicle that 
favourite metre of French poetry, the Alexandrine ; and, 
in my judgment, I confess they have thus, as compared 
with his prose, a great disadvantage to start with. In 
prose, the character of the vehicle for the composer's 
thoughts is not determined beforehand ; every composer 
has to make his own vehicle ; and who has ever done this 



7o MAURICE DE GUERIN. 

more admirably than the great prose-writers of France, — 
Pascal, Bossuet, Fenelon, Voltaire? But in verse the 
•composer has (with comparatively narrow liberty of 
modification) to accept his vehicle ready-made; it is 
therefore of vital importance to him that he should find 
at his disposal a vehicle adequate to convey the highest 
matters of poetry. We may even get a decisive test of 
the poetical power of a language and nation by ascertain- 
ing how far the principal poetical vehicle which they 
have employed, how far (in plainer words) the established 
national metre for high poetry, is adequate or inadequate. 
It seems to me that the established metre of this kind 
in France, — the Alexandrine, — is inadequate ; that as a 
vehicle for high poetry it is greatly inferior to the hexa- 
meter or to the iambics of Greece (for example), or to 
the blank verse of England. Therefore the man of 
genius who uses it is at a disadvantage as compared 
with the man of genius who has for conveying his 
thoughts a more adequate vehicle, metrical or not. 
Racine is at a disadvantage as compared with Sophocles 
or Shakspeare, and he is likewise at a disadvantage as 
compared with Bossuet. The same may be said of our 
own poets of the eighteenth century, a century which 
gave them as the main vehicle for their high poetry a 
metre inadequate (as much as the French Alexandrine, 
and nearly in the same way) for this poetry, — the ten- 
syllable couplet. It is worth remarking, that the English 
poet of the eighteenth century whose compositions wear 
best and give one the most entire satisfaction, — Gray, — 
hardly uses that couplet at all : this abstinence, however, 
limits Gray's productions to a few short compositions, 



MAURICE DE GUERIN. 79 

and (exquisite as these are) he is a poetical nature 
repressed and without free issue. For English poetical 
production on a great scale, for an English poet deploying 
all the forces of his genius, the ten-syllable couplet was, 
in the eighteenth century, the established, one may almost 
say the inevitable, channel. Now this couplet, admirable 
(as Chaucer uses it) for story-telling not of the epic pitch, 
and often admirable for a few lines even in poetry of a 
very high pitch, is for continuous use in poetry of this 
latter kind inadequate. Pope, in his Essay on Man, is 
thus at a disadvantage compared with Lucretius in his 
poem on Nature : Lucretius has an adequate vehicle, 
Pope has not. Nay, though Pope's genius for didactic 
poetry was not less than that of Horace, while his satirical 
power was certainly greater, still one's taste receives, I 
cannot but think, a certain satisfaction when one reads 
the Epistles and Satires of Horace, which it fails to 
receive when one reads the Satires and Epistles of Pope. 
Of such avail is the superior adequacy of the vehicle used 
to compensate even an inferiority of genius in the user ! 
In the same way Pope is at a disadvantage as compared 
with Addison. The best of Addison's composition (the 
" Coverley Papers " in the Spectator, for instance) wears 
better than the best of Pope's, because Addison has in 
his prose an intrinsically better vehicle for his genius than 
Pope in his couplet. But Bacon has no such advantage 
over Shakspeare \ nor has Milton, writing prose (for no 
contemporary English prose-writer must be matched with 
Milton except Milton himself), any such advantage over 
Milton writing verse : indeed, the advantage here is all 
the other way. 



bO MAURICE DE GUERIN. 

It is in the prose remains of Guerin, — his journals, his 
letters, and the striking composition which I have already 
mentioned, the Centaur, — that his extraordinary gift 
manifests itself. He has a truly interpretative faculty; 
the most profound and delicate sense of the life of 
Nature, and the most exquisite felicity in finding expres- 
sions to render that sense. To all who love poetry, 
Guerin deserves to be something more than a name ; and 
I shall try, in spite of the impossibility of doing justice to 
such a master of expression by translations, to make my 
English readers see for themselves how gifted an organisa- 
tion his was, and how few artists have received from 
Nature a more magical faculty of interpreting her. 

i 

In the winter of the year 1832 there was collected in 
Brittany, around the well-known Abbe Lamennais, a 
singular gathering. At a lonely place, La Chenaie, he 
had founded a religious retreat, to which disciples, at- 
tracted by his powers or by his reputation, repaired. 
Some came with the intention of preparing themselves 
for the ecclesiastical profession j others merely to profit 
by the society and discourse of so distinguished a master. 
Among the inmates were men whose names have since 
become known to all Europe, — Lacordaire and M. de 
Montalembert ; there were others, who have acquired a 
reputation, not European, indeed, but considerable, — the 
Abbe Gerbet, the Abbe Rohrbacher ; others, who have 
never quitted the shade of private life. The winter of 1 83 2 
was a period of crisis in the religious world of France : 
Lamennais's rupture with Rome, the condemnation of his 
opinions by the Pope, and his revolt against that con- 



MAURICE DE GUERIN. 8 I 

demnation, were imminent. Some of his followers, like 
Lacordaire, had already resolved not to cross the Rubicon 
with their leader, not to go into rebellion against Rome ; 
they were preparing to separate from him. The society of 
La Chenaie was soon to dissolve ; but, such as it is shown 
to us for a moment, with its voluntary character, its 
simple and severe life in common, its mixture of lay and 
clerical members, the genius of its chiefs, the sincerity of 
its disciples, — above all, its paramount fervent interest in 
matters of spiritual and religious concernment, — it offers 
a most instructive spectacle. It is not the spectacle we 
most of us think to find in France, the France we have 
imagined from common English notions, from the streets 
of Paris, from novels ; it shows us how, wherever there 
is greatness like that of France, there are, as its founda- 
tion, treasures of fervour, pure-mind edness, and spiritu- 
ality somewhere, whether we know of them or not ; — a 
store of that which Goethe calls Halt; — since greatness 
can never be founded upon frivolity and corruption. 

On the evening of the 18th of December in this year 
1832, M. de Lamennais was talking to those assembled 
in the sitting-room of La Chenaie of his recent journey 
to Italy. He talked with all his usual animation ; " but," 
writes one of his hearers, a Breton gentleman, M. d"e 
Marzan, " I soon became inattentive and absent, being 
struck with the reserved attitude of a young stranger some 
twenty-two years old, pale in face, his black hair already 
thin over his temples, with a southern eye, in which 
brightness and melancholy were mingled. He kept 
himself somewhat aloof, seeming to avoid notice rather 
than to court it. All the old faces of friends which I 

G 



82 MAURICE DE GUERIN. 

found about me at this my re-entry into the circle of La 
Chenaie failed to occupy me so much as the sight of 
this stranger, looking on, listening, observing, and saying 
nothing." 

The unknown was Maurice de Guerin. Of a noble 
but poor family, having lost his mother at six years old, 
he had been brought up by his father, a man saddened 
by his wife's death, and austerely religious, at the chateau 
of Le Cayla, in Languedoc. His childhood was not 
gay ; he had not the society of other boys; and solitude, 
the sight of his father's gloom, and the habit of accom- 
panying the cure of the parish on his rounds among the 
sick and dying, made him prematurely grave and familiar 
with sorrow. He went to school first at Toulouse, then 
at the College Stanislas at Paris, with a temperament 
almost as unfit as Shelley's for common school life. His 
youth was ardent, sensitive, agitated, and unhappy. In 
1832 he procured admission to La Chenaie to brace his 
spirit by the teaching of Lamennais, and to decide 
whether his religious feelings would determine themselves 
into a distinct religious vocation. Strong and deep 
religious feelings he had, implanted in him by nature, 
developed in him by the circumstances of his childhood ; 
but he had also (and here is the key to his character) 
that temperament which opposes itself to the fixedness 
of a religious vocation, or of any vocation of which 
fixedness is an essential attribute ; a temperament 
mobile, inconstant, eager, thirsting for new impressions, 
abhorring rules, aspiring to a "renovation without end;'" 
a temperament common enough among artists, but with 
which few artists, who have it to the same degree as 



MAURICE DE GUERIN. &$ 

Gue'rin, unite a seriousness and a sad intensity like his. 
After leaving school, and before going to La Chenaie, 
he had been at home at Le Cayla with his sister Eugenie 
(a wonderfully gifted person, whose genius so competent 
a judge as M. Sainte-Beuve is inclined to pronounce 
even superior to her brother's) and his sister Eugenie's 
friends. With one of these friends he had fallen in love, 
— a slight and transient fancy, but which had already 
called his poetical powers into exercise ; and his poems 
and fragments, in a certain green note-book (le Cahier 
Vert) which he long continued to make the depository 
of his thoughts, and which became famous among his 
friends, he brought with him to La Chenaie. There he 
found among the younger members of the Society several 
who, like himself, had a secret passion for poetry and 
literature ; with these he became intimate, and in his 
letters and journal we find him occupied, now with a 
literary commerce established with these friends, now 
with the fortunes, fast coming to a crisis, of the Society, 
and now with that for the sake of which he came to La 
Chenaie, — his religious progress and the state of his soul. 

On Christmas-day, 1832, having been then three 
weeks at La Chenaie, he writes thus of it to a friend 
of his family, M. de Bayne : — 

" La Chenaie is a sort of oasis in the midst of the 
steppes of Brittany. In front of the chateau stretches 
a very large garden, cut in two by a terrace with a lime 
avenue, at the end of which is a tiny chapel. I am 
extremely fond of this little oratory, where one breathes 
a twofold peace, — the peace of solitude and the peace 
of the Lord. When spring comes we shall walk to 
G 2 



84 MAURICE DE GUERIN. 

prayers between two borders of flowers. On the east 
side, and only a few yards from the chateau, sleeps a 
small mere between two woods, where the birds in warm 
weather sing all day long ■ and then, — right, left, on all 
sides, — woods, woods, everywhere woods. It looks deso- 
late just now that all is bare and the woods are rust- 
colour, and under this Brittany sky, which is always 
clouded and so low that it seems as if it were going 
to fall on your head ; but as soon as spring comes the 
sky raises itself up, the woods come to life again, and 
everything will be full of charm." 

Of what La Chenaie will be when spring comes he 
has a foretaste on the 3d of March. 

"To-day" (he writes in his journal) "has enchanted me. 
For the first time for a long while the sun has shown 
himself in all his beauty. He has made the buds of the 
leaves and flowers swell, and he has waked up in me a 
thousand happy thoughts. The clouds assume more and 
more their light and graceful shapes, and are sketching, 
over the blue sky, the most charming fancies. The 
woods have not yet got their leaves, but they are taking 
an indescribable air of life and gaiety, which gives them 
quite a new physiognomy. Everything is getting ready 
for the great festival of Nature." 

Storm and snow adjourn this festival a little longer. 
On the nth of March he writes : — 

" It has snowed all night. I have been to look at our 
primroses ; each of them had its small load of snow, 
and was bowing its head under its burden. These 
pretty flowers, with their rich yellow colour, had a 
charming effect under their white hoods. I saw whole 



MAURICE DE GUERIN. 85 

tufts of them roofed over by a single block of snow \ all 
these laughing flowers thus shrouded and leaning one 
upon another, made one think of a group of young 
girls surprised by a shower, and sheltering under a 
white apron." 

The burst of spring comes at last, though late. On 
the 5th of April we find Gue'rin "sitting in the sun to 
penetrate himself to the very marrow with the divine 
spring." On the 3d of May, " one can actually see the 
progress of the green ; it has made a start from the 
garden to the shrubberies, it is getting the upper hand 
all along the mere ; it leaps, ..one may say, from tree to 
tree, from thicket to thicket, in the fields and on - the 
hill-sides ; and I can see it already arrived at the forest 
edge and beginning to spread itself over the broad back 
of the forest. Soon it will have overrun everything as 
far as the eye can reach, and. all those wide spaces 
between here and the horizon will be moving and sound- 
ing like one vast sea, a sea of emerald." 

Finally, on the 16th of May, he writes to M. de Bayne 
that " the gloomy and bad days, — bad because they bring 
temptation by their gloom, — are, thanks to God and the 
spring, over ; and I see approaching a long file of shining 
and happy days, to do me all the good in the world. 
This Brittany of ours," he continues, " gives one the idea 
of the greyest and most wrinkled old woman possible 
suddenly changed back by the touch of a fairy's wand 
into a girl of twenty, and one of the loveliest in the 
world ; the fine weather has so decked and beautified the 
dear old country." He felt, however, the cloudiness and 
cold of the " dear old country " with all the sensitiveness 



86 MAURICE DE GUERIN. 

of a child of the South. " What a difference," he cries, 
"between the sky of Brittany, even on the finest day, 
and the sky of our South ! Here the summer has, even 
on its highdays and holidays, something mournful, over- 
cast, and stinted about it. It is like a miser who is 
making a show ; there is a niggardliness in his magnifi- 
cence. Give me our Languedoc sky, so bountiful of 
light, so blue, so largely vaulted ! " And somewhat later, 
complaining of the short and dim sunlight of a February 
day in Paris, " What a sunshine," he exclaims, " to 
gladden eyes accustomed to all the wealth of light of the 
South ! — anx larges et liberates effusions de lumiere du del 
die Midi? 

In the long winter of La Chenaie his great resource 
was literature. One has often heard that an educated 
Frenchman's reading seldom goes much beyond French 
and Latin, and that he makes the authors in these two 
languages his sole literary standard. This may or may 
not be true of Frenchmen in general, but there can be no 
question as to the width of the reading of Guerin and his 
friends, and as to the range of their literary sympathies. 
One of the circle, Hippolyte la Morvonnais, — a poet who 
published a volume of verse, and died in the prime of 
life, — had a passionate admiration for Wordsworth, and 
had even, it is said, made a pilgrimage to Rydal Mount 
to visit him \ and in Gue'rin's own reading I find, besides 
the French names of Bernardin de St. Pierre, Chateau- 
briand, Lamartine, and Victor Hugo, the names of 
Homer, Dante, Shakspeare, Milton, and Goethe ; and 
he quotes both from Greek and from English authors in 
the original. His literary tact is beautifully fine and true. 



MAURICE DE GUERIN. 87 

" Every poet," he writes to his sister, "has his own art of 
poetry written on the ground of his own soul ; there is no 
other. Be constantly observing Nature in her smallest 
details, and then write as the current of your thoughts 
guides you ; — that is all." But with all this freedom from 
the bondage of forms and rules, Guerin marks with perfect 
precision the faults of the free French literature of his 
time, — the litteratiire facile, — and judges the romantic 
school and its prospects like a master: "that youthful 
literature which has put forth all its blossom prematurely, 
and has left itself a helpless prey to the returning frost, 
stimulated as it has been by the burning sun of our 
century, by this atmosphere charged with a perilous heat, 
which has over-hastened every sort of development, and 
will most likely reduce to a handful of grains the harvest 
of our age." And the popular authors, — those "whose 
name appears once and disappears for ever, whose books, 
unwelcome to all serious people, welcome to the rest of 
the world, to novelty-hunters and novel-readers, fill with 
vanity these vain souls, and then, falling from hands 
heavy with the languor of satiety, drop for ever into the 
gulf of oblivion ; " and those, more noteworthy, " the 
writers of books celebrated, and, as works of art, deserv- 
ing celebrity, but which have in them not one grain of 
that hidden manna, not one of those sweet and whole- 
some thoughts which nourish the human soul and refresh 
it when it is weary," — these he treats with such severity 
that he may in some sense be described, as he describes 
himself, as "invoking with his whole heart a classical 
restoration." He is best described, however, not as a 
partisan of any school, but as an ardent seeker for that 



88 MAURICE DE GUERIN. 

mode of expression which is the most natural, happy, 
and true. He writes to his sister Eugenie : — 

" I want you to reform your system of composition ; it 
is too loose, too vague, too Lamartinian. Your verse is 
too sing-song ; it does not talk enough. Form for your- 
self a style of your own, which shall be your real expres- 
sion. Study the French language by attentive reading, 
making it your care to remark constructions, turns of 
expression, delicacies of style, but without ever adopt- 
ing the manner of any master. In the works of these 
masters we must learn our language, but we must use it 
each in our own fashion." * 

It was not, however, to perfect his literary judgment 
that Guerin came to La Chenaie. The religious feeling, 
which was as much a part of his essence as the passion 
for Nature and the literary instinct, shows itself at 
moments jealous of these its rivals, and alarmed at their 
predominance. Like all powerful feelings, it wants to 
exclude every other feeling and to be absolute. One 
Friday in April, after he has been delighting himself with 
the shapes of the clouds and the progress of the spring, 
he suddenly bethinks himself that the day is Good Friday, 
and exclaims in his diary : — 

" My God, what is my soul about that it can thus go 
running after such fugitive delights on Good Friday, on 
this day all filled with thy death and our redemption ? 
There is in me I know not what damnable spirit, that 

* Part of these extracts date from a time a little after Guerin's 
residence at La Chenaie ; but already, amidst the readings and 
conversations of La Chenaie, his literary judgment was perfectly 
formed. 



MAURICE DE GUERIN. 89 

awakens in me strong discontents, and is for ever prompt- 
ing me to rebel against the holy exercises and the devout 
collectedness of soul which are the meet preparation for 
these great solemnities of our faith. Oh how well can I 
trace here the old leaven, from which I have not yet 
perfectly cleared my soul ! " 

And again, in a letter to M. de Marzan : " Of what, 
my God, are we made," he cries, " that a little verdure 
and a few trees should be enough to rob us of our tran- 
quillity and to distract us from thy love ? " And writing, 
three days after Easter Sunday, in his journal, he records 
the reception at La Chenaie of a fervent neophyte, in 
words which seem to convey a covert blame of his own 
want of fervency : — 

" Three days have passed over our heads since the great 
festival. One anniversary the less for us yet to spend 
of the death and resurrection of our Saviour ! Every 
year thus bears away with it its solemn festivals ; when 
will the everlasting festival be here ? I have been witness 
of a most touching sight; Francois has brought us one 
of his friends whom he has gained to the faith. This 
neophyte joined us in our exercises during the Holy week, 
and on Easter-day he received the communion with us. 
Francois was in raptures. It is a truly good work which 
he has thus done. Francois is quite young, hardly twenty 
years old ; M. de la M. is thirty, and is married. There 
is something most touching and beautifully simple in M. 
de la M. letting himself thus be brought to God by quite 
a young man; and to see friendship, . on Francois's side, 
thus doing the work of an Apostle, is not less beautiful 
and touching." 



90 MAURICE DE GUERIN. 

Admiration for Lamennais worked in the same direc- 
tion with this feeling. Lamennais never appreciated 
Guerin ; his combative, rigid, despotic nature, of which 
the characteristic was energy, had no affinity with Guerin' s 
elusive, undulating, impalpable nature, of which the 
characteristic was delicacy. He set little store by his 
new disciple, and could hardly bring himself to understand 
what others found so remarkable in him, his own genuine 
feeling towards him being one of indulgent compassion. 
But the intuition of Guerin, more discerning than the logic 
of his master, instinctively felt what there was com- 
manding and tragic in Lamennais's character, different 
as this was from his own ; and some of his notes are 
among the most interesting records of Lamennais which 
remain. 

" 'Do you know what it is,' M. Feli* said to us on 
the evening of the day before yesterday, 'which makes 
man the most suffering of all creatures 1 It is that he 
has one foot in the finite and the other in the infinite, 
and that he is torn asunder, not by four horses, as in the 
horrible old times, but between two worlds.' Again he 
said to us as we heard the clock strike : ' If that clock 
knew that it was to be destroyed the next instant, it 
would still keep striking its hour until that instant 
arrived. My children, be as the clock ; whatever may 
be going to happen to you, strike always your hour.' " 

Another time Guerin writes, 

" To-day M. Feli startled us. He was sitting behind 
the chapel, under the two Scotch firs ; he took his stick 

* The familiar name given to M. de Lamennais by his followers 
at La Chenaie. 



MAURICE DE GUERIN. 91 

and marked out a grave on the turf, and said to Elie, 
< It is there I wish to be buried, but no tombstone ! only 
a simple hillock of grass. Oh, how well I shall be 
there ! ' Elie thought he had a presentiment that his 
end was near. This is not the first time he has been 
visited by such a presentiment ; when he was setting out 
for Rome, he said to those here : ' I do not expect ever 
to come back to you ; you must do the good which I 
have failed to do.' He is impatient for death." 

Overpowered by the ascendency of Lamennais, Guerin, 
in spite of his hesitations, in spite of his confession to 
himself that " after a three weeks' close scrutiny of his 
soul, in the hope of finding the pearl of a religious vocation 
hidden in some corner of it," he had failed to find what 
he sought, took, at the end of August, 1833, a decisive 
step. He joined the religious order which Lamennais 
had founded. But at this very moment the deepening 
displeasure of Rome with Lamennais determined the 
Bishop of Rennes to break up, in so far as it was a 
religious congregation, the Society of La Chenaie, to 
transfer the novices to Ploermel, and to place them 
under other superintendence. In September, Lamennais, 
" who had not yet ceased," writes M. de Marzan, a fervent 
Catholic, " to be a Christian and a priest, took leave of 
his beloved colony of La Chenaie, with the anguish of a 
general who disbands his army down to the last recruit, 
and withdraws annihilated from the field of battle." 
Gue'rin went to Ploermel. But here, in the seclusion of 
a real religious house, he instantly perceived how alien 
to a spirit like his, — a spirit which, as he himself says 
somewhere, " had need of the open air, wanted to see 



92 MAURICE DE GUERIN. 

the sun and the flowers," — was the constraint and mono- 
tony of a monastic life, when Lamennais's genius was no 
longer present to enliven this life for him. On the 7th 
of October he renounced the novitiate, believing himself 
a partisan of Lamennais in his quarrel with Rome, re- 
proaching the life he had left with demanding passive 
obedience instead of trying "to put in practice the 
admirable alliance of order with liberty, and of variety 
with unity," and declaring that, for his part, he preferred 
taking the chances of a life of adventure to submitting 
himself to be " garotte par u?i reglement, — tied hand and 
foot by a set of rules." In real truth, a life of adventure, 
or rather a life free to wander at its own will, was that to 
which his nature irresistibly impelled him. 

For a career of adventure, the inevitable field was 
Paris. But before this career began, there came a stage, 
the smoothest, perhaps, and the most happy in the short 
life of Guerin. M. la Morvonnais, one of his La Chenaie 
friends, — some years older than Guerin, and married to 
a wife of singular sweetness and charm, — had a house by 
the seaside at the mouth of one of the beautiful rivers of 
Brittany, the Arguenon. He asked Guerin, when he left 
Ploermel, to come and stay with him at this place, called 
Le Val de 1' Arguenon, and Guerin spent the winter of 
1833-4 there. I grudge every word about Le Val and 
its inmates which is not Guerin's own, so charming is 
the picture he draws of them, so truly does his talent 
find itself in its best vein as he draws it. 

"How full of goodness" (he writes in his journal of 
the 7th of December) " is Providence to me ! For fear 
the sudden passage, from the mild and temperate air of a 



MAURICE DE GUERIN. 93 

religious life to the torrid clime of the world should be 
too trying for my soul, it has conducted me, after I have 
left my sacred shelter, to a house planted on the frontier 
between the two regions, where, without being in soli- 
tude, one is not yet in the world; a house whose 
windows look on the one side towards the plain where 
the tumult of men is rocking, on the other towards the 
wilderness where the servants of God are chanting. I 
intend to write down the record of my sojourn here, for 
the days here spent are full of happiness, and I know 
that in the time to come I shall often turn back to the 
story of these past felicities. A man, pious, and a poet ; 
a woman, whose spirit is in such perfect sympathy with 
his that you would say they had but one being between 
them; a child, called Marie like her mother, and who 
sends, like a star, the first rays of her love and thought 
through the white cloud of infancy ; a simple life in an 
old-fashioned house; the ocean, which comes morning 
and evening to bring us its harmonies; and lastly, a 
wanderer who descends from Carmel and is going on to 
Babylon, and who has laid down at this threshold his 
staff and his sandals, to take his seat at the hospitable 
table ; — here is matter to make a biblical poem of, if I 
could only describe things as I can feel them ! " 

Every line written by Guerin during this stay at Le 
Val is worth quoting, but I have only room for one 
extract more : — 

"Never" (he writes, a fortnight later, on the 20th of 
December), " never have I tasted so inwardly and deeply 
the happiness of home-life. All the little details of this 
life which in their succession make up the day, are to me 



94 MAURICE DE GUERIN. 

so many stages of a continuous charm carried from one 
end of the day to the other. The morning greeting, 
which in some sort renews the pleasure of the first 
arrival, for the words with which one meets are almost 
the same, and the separation at night, through the hours 
of darkness and uncertainty, does not ill represent longer 
separations ; then breakfast, during which you have the 
fresh enjoyment of having met together again ; the stroll 
afterwards, when we go out and bid Nature good-morn- 
ing ; the return and setting to work in an old panelled 
chamber looking out on the sea, inaccessible to all the 
stir of the house, a perfect sanctuary of labour ; dinner, 
to which we are called, not by a bell, which reminds one 
too much of school or a great house, but by a pleasant 
voice ; the gaiety, the merriment, the talk flitting from 
one subject to another and never dropping so long as 
the meal lasts ; the crackling fire of dry branches to 
which we draw our chairs directly afterwards, the kind 
words that are spoken round the warm flame which 
sings while we talk ; and then, if it is fine, the walk by 
the seaside, when the sea has for its visitors a mother 
with her child in her arms, this child's father and a 
stranger, each of these two last with a stick in his hand ; 
the rosy lips of the little girl, which keep talking at the 
same time with the waves, — now and then tears shed by 
her and cries of childish fright at the edge of the sea ; 
our thoughts, the father's and mine, as we stand and 
look at the mother and child smiling at one another, or 
at the child in tears and the mother trying to comfort it 
by her caresses and exhortations ; the Ocean, going on 
all the while rolling up his waves and noises ; the dead 



MAURICE DE GUERIN. 95 

boughs which we go and cut, here and there, out of the 
copse-wood, to make a quick and bright fire when we 
get home, — this little taste of the woodman's calling 
which brings us closer to Nature and makes us think of 
M. Feli's eager fondness for the same work ; the hours 
of study and poetical flow which carry us to supper- 
time j this meal, which summons us by the same gentle 
voice as its predecessor, and which is passed amid the 
same joys, only less loud, because evening sobers every- 
thing, tones everything down ; then our evening, ushered 
in by the blaze of a cheerful fire, and which with its 
alternations of reading and talking brings us at last to 
bed-time :— to all the charms of a day so spent add the 
dreams which follow it, and your imagination will still fall 
far short of these home-joys in their delightful reality." 

I said the foregoing should be my last extract, but 
who could resist this picture of a January evening on 
the coast of Brittany ? — 

" All the sky is covered over with grey clouds just 
silvered at the edges. The sun, who departed a few 
minutes ago, has left behind him enough light to temper 
for awhile the black shadows, and to soften down, as it 
were, the approach of night. The winds are hushed, 
and the tranquil ocean sends up to me, when I go out 
on the doorstep to listen, only a melodious murmur, 
which dies away in the soul like a beautiful wave on the 
beach. The birds, the first to obey the nocturnal in- 
fluence, make their way towards the woods, and you 
hear the rustle of their wings in the clouds. The copses 
which cover the whole hill-side of Le Val, which all the 
day-time are alive with the chirp of the wren, the laughing 



9 6 MAURICE DE GUERIN. 

whistle of the woodpecker,* and the different notes of a 
multitude of birds, have no longer any sound in their 
paths and thickets, unless it be the prolonged high call 
of the blackbirds at play with one another and chasing 
one another, after all the other birds have their heads safe 
under their wings. The noise of man, always the last 
to be silent, dies gradually out over the face of the fields. 
The general murmur fades away, and one hears hardly a 
sound except what comes from the villages and hamlets, 
in which, up till far into the night, there are cries of 
children and barking of dogs. Silence wraps me round ; 
everything seeks repose except this pen of mine, which 
perhaps disturbs the rest of some living atom asleep in 
a crease of my note-book, for it makes its light scratching 
as it puts down these idle thoughts. Let it stop, then ! 
for all I write, have written, or shall write, will never be 
worth setting against the sleep of an atom." 

On the i st of February we find him in a lodging at 
Paris. " I enter the world " (such are the last words 
written in his journal at Le Val) " with a secret horror." 
His outward history for the next five years is soon told. 
He found himself in Paris, poor, fastidious, and with 
health which already, no doubt, felt the obscure presence 
of the malady of which he died, — consumption. One 
of his Brittany acquaintances introduced him to editors, 
tried to engage him in the periodical literature of 
Paris ; and so unmistakeable was Guerin's talent, that 
even his first essays were immediately accepted. But 
Guerin's genius was of a kind which unfitted him to get 

* "The woodpecker laughs," says White of Selbome ; and here 
is Guerin, in Brittany, confirming his testimony. 



MAURICE DE GUERIN. 97 

his bread in this manner. At first he was pleased with 
the notion of living by his pen ; "je riai qiict ecrire" he 
says to his sister, — "I have only got to write." But to 
a nature like his, endued with the passion for perfection, 
the necessity to produce, to produce constantly, to pro- 
duce whether in the vein or out of the vein, to produce 
something good or bad or middling, as it may happen, 
but at all events something, — is the most intolerable of 
tortures. To escape from it he betook himself to that 
common but most perfidious refuge of men of letters, 
that refuge to which Goldsmith and poor Hartley Cole- 
ridge had betaken themselves before him, — the profes- 
sion, of teaching. In September, 1834, he procured an 
engagement at the College Stanislas, where he had him- 
self been educated. It was vacation-time, and all he 
had to do was to teach a small class composed of boys 
who did not go home for the holidays, — in his own 
words, " scholars left like sick sheep in the fold, while 
the rest of the flock are frisking in the fields." After 
the vacation he was kept 1 on at the College as a super- 
numerary. " The master of the fifth class has asked for 
a month's leave of absence ; I am taking his place, and 
by this work I get one hundred francs (4/.). I have 
been looking about for pupils to give private lessons to, 
and I have found three or four. Schoolwork and private 
lessons together fill my day from half-past seven in the 
morning till half-past nine at night. The college dinner 
serves me for breakfast, and I go and dine in the evening 
at twenty-four- jw^, as a young man beginning life should." 
To better his position in the hierarchy of public teachers 
it was necessary that he should take the degree of agrege 

H 



98 MAURICE DE GUERIN. 

es-kttres, corresponding to our degree of Master of 
Arts ; and to his heavy work in teaching, there was 
thus added that of preparing for a severe examination. 
The drudgery of this life was very irksome to him, 
although less insupportable than the drudgery of the 
profession of letters ; inasmuch as to a sensitive man, 
like Guerin, to silence his genius is more tolerable than 
to hackney it. Still the yoke wore him deeply, and he 
had moments of bitter revolt : he continued, however, 
to bear it with resolution, and on the whole with patience, 
for four years. On the 15th of November, 1838, he 
married a young Creole lady of some fortune, Mademoi- 
selle Caroline de Gervain, "whom," to use his own 
words, " Destiny, who loves these surprises, has wafted 
from the farthest Indies into my arms." The marriage 
was happy, and it ensured to Guerin liberty and leisure ; 
but now " the blind Fury with the abhorred shears " was 
hard at hand. Consumption declared itself in him : 
" I pass my life," he writes, with his old playfulness and 
calm, to his sister, on the 8th of April, 1839, "within 
my bed curtains, and wait patiently enough, thanks to 
Caro's* goodness, books, and dreams, for the recovery 
which the sunshine is to bring with it." In search of 
this sunshine he was taken to his native country, Lan- 
guedoc, but in vain. He died at Le Cayla on the 19th 
of July, 1839. 

The vicissitudes of his inward life during these five 

years were more considerable. His opinions and tastes 

underwent great, or what seem to be great, changes. He 

came to Paris the ardent partisan of Lamennais : even 

* His wife. 



MAURICE DE GUERIN. 99 

in April, 1834, after Rome had finally condemned La- 
mennais, — " To-night there will go forth from Paris," he 
writes, "with his face set to the west, a man whose every 
step I would fain follow, and who returns to the desert 
for which I sigh. M. Feli departs this evening for La 
Chenaie." But in October, 1835, — "I assure you," he 
writes to his sister, " I am at last weaned from M. de 
Lamennais ; one does not remain a babe and suckling 
for ever ; I am perfectly freed from his influence." There 
was a greater change than this. In 1834 the main cause 
of Guerin's aversion to the literature of the French 
romantic school, was that this literature, having had a 
religious origin had ceased to be religious : " it has for- 
gotten," he says, "the house and the admonitions of 
its Father." But his friend, M. de Marzan, tells us of a 
" deplorable revolution " which, by 1836, had taken place 
in him. Guerin had become intimate with the chiefs 
of this very literature ; he no longer went to church ; 
" the bond of a common faith, in which our friendship 
had its birth, existed between us no longer." Then, 
again, " this interregnum was not destined to last." 
Reconverted to his old faith by suffering and by the 
pious efforts of his sister Eugenie, Guerin died a Catholic. 
His feelings about society underwent a like change. 
After " entering the world with a secret horror," after 
congratulating himself when he had been some months 
at Paris on being " disengaged from the social tumult 
out of the reach of those blows which, when I live in 
the thick of the world, bruise me, irritate me, or utterly 
crush me," M. Sainte-Beuve tells us of him, two years 
afterwards, appearing in society " a man of the world, 
H 2 



IOO MAURICE DE GUERIN. 

elegant, even fashionable ; a talker who could hold his 
own against the most brilliant talkers of Paris." 

In few natures, however, is there really such essential 
consistency as in Guerin's. He says of himself, in the 
very beginning of his journal: "I owe everything to 
poetry, for there is no other name to give to the sum 
total of my thoughts ; I owe to it whatever I now have 
pure, lofty, and solid in my soul; 1 owe to it all my 
consolations in the past ; I shall probably owe to it my 
future." Poetry, the poetical instinct, was indeed the 
basis of his nature ; but to say so thus absolutely is not 
quite enough. One aspect of poetry fascinated Guerin's 
imagination and held it prisoner. Poetry is the inter- 
pretress of the natural world, and she is the interpretress 
of the moral world ; it was as the interpretress of the 
natural world that she had Guerin for her mouthpiece. 
To make magically near and real the life of Nature, and 
man's life only so far as it is a part of that Nature, was 
his faculty ; a faculty of naturalistic, not of moral inter- 
pretation. This faculty always has for its basis a peculiar 
temperament, an extraordinary delicacy of organisation 
and susceptibility to impressions ; in exercising it the 
poet is in a great degree passive (Wordsworth thus 
speaks of a wise passiveness) ; he aspires to be a sort 
of human y£olian-harp, catching and rendering every 
rustle of Nature. To assist at the evolution of the 
whole life of the world is his craving, and intimately to 

feel it all : 

. . " the glow, the thrill of life, 
Where, where do these abound?" 

is what he asks : he resists being riveted and held 



MAURICE DE GUERIN. 10 1 

stationary by any single impression, but would be borne 
on for ever down an enchanted stream. He goes into 
religion and out of religion, into society and out of 
society, not from the motives which impel men in 
general, but to feel what it is all like ; he is thus hardly 
a moral agent, and, like the passive and ineffectual 
Uranus of Keats's poem, he may say : 

" I am but a voice ; 

My life is but the life of winds and tides ; 
No more than winds and tides can I avail." 

He hovers over the tumult of life, but does not really 
put his hand to it. 

No one has expressed the aspirations of this tempera- 
ment better than Guerin himself. In the last year of 
his life he writes : — 

" I return, as you see, to my old brooding over the 
world of Nature, that line which my thoughts irresistibly 
take ; a sort of passion which gives me enthusiasm, 
tears, bursts of joy, and an eternal food for musing ; 
and yet I am neither philosopher, nor naturalist, nor 
anything learned whatsoever. There is one word which 
is the God of my imagination, the tyrant, I ought rather 
to say, that fascinates it, lures it onward, gives it work to 
do without ceasing, and will finally carry it I know not 
where ; the word life." 

And in one place in his journal he says : — 

" My imagination welcomes every dream, every im- 
pression, without attaching itself to any, and goes on for 
ever seeking something new." 

And again, in another : — 



102 MAURICE DE GUERIN. 

" The longer I live, and the clearer I discern between 
true and false in society, the more does the inclination 
to live, not as a savage or a misanthrope, but as a solitary 
man on the frontiers of society, on the outskirts of the 
world, gain strength and grow in me. The birds come 
and go and make nests around our habitations, they are 
fellow-citizens of our farms and hamlets with us ; but 
they take their flight in a heaven which is boundless, but 
the hand of God alone gives and measures to them their 
daily food, but they build their nests in the heart of the 
thick bushes, or hang them in the height of the trees. 
So would I, too, live, hovering round society, and having 
always at my back a field of liberty vast as the sky." 

In the same spirit he longed for travel. " When one 
is a wanderer," he w^rites to his sister, " one feels that 
one fulfils the true condition of humanity." And the 
last entry in his journal is — " The stream of travel is 
full of delight. Oh, who will set me adrift on this 
Nile ! " 

Assuredly it is not in this temperament that the active 
virtues have their rise. On the contrary, this tempera- 
ment, considered in itself alone, indisposes for the 
discharge of them. Something morbid and excessive, 
as manifested in Guerin, it undoubtedly has. In him, 
as in Keats, and as in another youth of genius, whose 
name, but the other day unheard of, Lord Houghton has 
so gracefully written in the history of English poetry, — 
David Gray, — the temperament, the talent itself, is deeply 
influenced by their mysterious malady ; the temperament 
is devouring; it uses vital power too hard and too fast, 
paying the penalty in long hours of unutterable exhaus- 



MAURICE DE GUERIN. J03 

tion and in premature death. The intensity of Guerin's 
depression is described to us by Guerin himself with the 
same incomparable touch with which he describes happier 
feelings ; far oftener than any pleasurable sense of his 
gift he has "the sense profound, near, immense, of my 
misery, of my inward poverty." And again : " My in- 
ward misery gains upon me; I no longer dare look 
within." And on another day of gloom he does look 
within, and here is the terrible analysis : — 

" Craving, unquiet, seeing only by glimpses, my spirit 
is stricken by all those ills which are the sure fruit of a 
youth doomed never to ripen into manhood. I grow 
old and wear myself out in the most futile mental 
strainings, and make no progress. My head seems 
dying, and when the wind blows I fancy I feel it, as 
if I were a tree, blowing through a number of withered 
branches in my top. Study is intolerable to me, or 
rather it is quite out of my power. Mental work brings 
on, not drowsiness, but an irritable and nervous disgust 
which drives me out, I know not where, into the streets 
and public places. The Spring, whose delights used to 
come every year stealthily and mysteriously to charm me 
in my retreat, crushes me this year under a weight of 
sudden hotness. I should be glad of any event which 
delivered me from the situation in which I am. If I 
were free I would embark for some distant country 
where I could begin life anew." 

Such is this temperament in the frequent hours when 
the sense of its own weakness and isolation crushes it 
to the ground Certainly it was not for Guerin' s happi- 
nass, or for Keats's, as men count happiness, to be as 



104 MAURICE DE GUERIN. 

they were. Still the very excess and predominance of 
their temperament has given to the fruits of their genius 
an unique brilliancy and flavour. I have said that poetry 
interprets in two ways ; it interprets by expressing with 
magical felicity the physiognomy and movement of the 
outward world, and it interprets by expressing, with 
inspired conviction, the ideas and laws of the inward 
world of man's moral and spiritual nature. In other 
words, poetry is interpretative both by having natural 
magic in it, and by having moral profundity. In both 
ways it illuminates man ; it gives him a satisfying sense 
of reality; it reconciles him with himself and the universe. 
Thus .^schylus's " Spao-avri 7ra0ctv" and his " dvtjpiOfxov 
ye\aa/j,a " are alike interpretative. Shakspeare interprets 
both when he says, 

' ' Full many a glorious morning have I seen, 
Flatter the mountain-tops with sovran eye;" 

and when he says, 

" There's a divinity that shapes our ends, 
Rough-hew them as we will." 

These great poets unite in themselves the faculty of both 
kinds of interpretation, the naturalistic and the moral. 
But it is observable that in the poets who unite both - 
kinds, the latter (the moral) usually ends by making 
itself the master. In Shakspeare the two kinds seem 
wonderfully to balance one another ; but even in him 
the balance leans; his expression tends to become too 
little sensuous and simple, too much intellectualised. 
The same thing may be yet more strongly affirmed of 
Lucretius and of Wordsworth. In Shelley there is not a 



MAURICE DE GUERIN. 1 05 

balance of the two gifts, nor even a co- existence of 
them, but there is a passionate straining after them both, 
and this is what makes Shelley, as a man, so interesting : 
I will not now inquire how much Shelley achieves as a 
poet, but whatever he achieves, he in general fails to 
achieve natural magic in his expression ; in Mr. Pal- 
grave's charming Treasury may be seen a gallery of his 
failures.* But in Keats and Guerin, in whom the faculty 
of naturalistic interpretation is overpoweringly pre- 
dominant, the natural magic is perfect; when they 
speak of the world they speak like Adam naming by 
divine inspiration the creatures ; their expression corre- 
sponds with the thing's essential reality. Even between 
Keats and Guerin, however, there is a distinction to be 
drawn. Keats has, above all, a sense of what is 
pleasureable and open in the life of Nature; for him 
she is the Alma Parens : his expression has, therefore, 
more than Guerin's, something genial, outward, and 
sensuous. Guerin has above all a sense of what there 
is adorable and secret in the life of Nature ; for him she 
is the Magna Parens ; his expression has, therefore, 
more than Keats's, something mystic, inward, and 
profound. 

Compare, for example, his "Lines Written in the Euganean 
Hills," with Keats's "Ode to Autumn" {Golden Treasiiry, pp. 256, 
284). The latter piece renders Nature ; the former tries to render 
her. I will not deny, however, that Shelley has natural magic in 
his rhythm ; what I deny is, that he has it in his language. It 
always seems to me that the right sphere for Shelley's genius was 
the sphere of music, not of poetry ; the medium of sounds he can 
master, but to master the more difficult medium of words he has 
neither intellectual force enough nor sanity enough. 



I06 MAURICE DE GUERIN. 

So he lived like a man possessed ; with his eye not 
on his own career, not on the public, not on fame, but 
on the Isis whose veil he had uplifted. He published 
nothing : " There is more power and beauty," he writes, 
" in the well-kept secret of one's-self and one's thoughts, 
than in the display of a whole heaven that one may 
have inside one." " My spirit," he answers the friends 
who urge him to write, "is of the home-keeping order, 
and has no fancy for adventure ; literary adventure is 
above all distasteful to it ; for this, indeed (let me say 
so without the least self-sufficiency), it has a contempt. 
The literary career seems to me unreal, both in its own 
essence and in the rewards which one seeks from it, and 
therefore fatally marred by a secret absurdity." His 
acquaintances, and among them distinguished men of 
letters, full of admiration for the originality and delicacy 
of his talent, laughed at his self-depreciation, warmly 
assured him of his powers. He received their assur- 
ances with a mournful incredulity, which contrasts curi- 
ously with the self-assertion of poor David Gray, whom 
I just now mentioned. " It seems to me intolerable," 
he writes, " to appear to men other than one appears to 
God. My worst torture at this moment is the over- 
estimate which generous friends form of me. We are 
told that at the last judgment the secret of all con- 
sciences will be laid bare to the universe ; would that 
mine were so this day, and that every passer-by could 
see me as I am!" " High above my head," he says at 
another time, " far, far away, I seem to hear the murmur 
of that world of thought and feeling to which I aspire so 
often, but where I can never attain. I think of those of 



MAURICE DE GUERIN. I07 

my own age who have wings strong enough to reach it r 
but I think of them without jealousy, and as men on 
earth contemplate the elect and their felicity." And, 
criticising his own composition, "When I begin a subject, 
my self-conceit " (says this exquisite artist) " imagines 
I am doing wonders ; and when I have finished, I see 
nothing but a wretched made-up imitation, composed of 
odds and ends of colour stolen from other people's 
palettes, and tastelessly mixed together on mine." Such 
was his passion for perfection, his disdain for all poetical 
work not perfectly adequate and felicitous. The magic 
of expression to which by the force of this passion he 
won his way, will make the name of Maurice de Guerin 
remembered in literature. 

I have already mentioned the Centaur, a sort of 
prose poem by Guerin, which Madame Sand published 
after his death. The idea of this composition came to 
him, M. Sainte-Beuve says, in the course of some visits 
which he made with his friend, M. Trebutien, a learned 
antiquarian, to the Museum of Antiquities in the Louvre. 
The free and wild life which the Greeks expressed by 
such creations as the Centaur had, as we might well 
expect, a strong charm for him ; under the same inspira- 
tion he composed a Bacchante, which was meant by him 
to form part of a prose poem on the adventures of 
Bacchus in India. Real as was the affinity which 
Guerin' s nature had for these subjects, I doubt whether, 
in treating them, he would have found the full and 
final employment of his talent. But the beauty of his 
Centaur is extraordinary; in its whole conception and 
expression this piece has in a wonderful degree that 



108 MAURICE DE GUERIN. 

natural magic of which I have said so much, and the 
rhythm has a charm which bewitches even a foreigner. 
An old Centaur on his mountain, is supposed to relate 
to Melampus, a human questioner, the life of his youth. 
Untranslateable as the piece is, I shall conclude with 
some extracts from it : — 



"The Centaur. 

" I had my birth in the caves of these mountains. 
Like the stream of this valley, whose first drops trickle 
from some weeping rock in a deep cavern, the first 
moment of my life fell in the darkness of a remote abode, 
and without breaking the silence. When our mothers 
draw near to the time of their delivery, they withdraw to 
the caverns, and in the depth of the loneliest of them, 
in the thickest of its gloom, bring forth, without uttering 
a plaint, a fruit silent as themselves. Their puissant 
milk makes us surmount, without weakness or dubious 
struggle, the first difficulties of life ; and yet we leave our 
caverns later than you your cradles. The reason is that 
we have a doctrine that the early days of existence 
should be kept apart and enshrouded, as days filled with 
the presence of the gods. Nearly the whole term of 
my growth was passed in the darkness where I was born. 
The recesses of my dwelling ran so far under the moun- 
tain, that I should not have known on which side was 
the exit, had not the winds, when they sometimes made 
their way through the opening, sent fresh airs in, and a 



MAURICE DE GUERIN. I09 

sudden trouble. Sometimes, too, my mother came back to 
me, having about her the odours of the valleys, or stream- 
ing from the waters which were her haunt. Her returning 
thus, without a word said of the valleys or the rivers, 
but with the emanations from them hanging about her, 
troubled my spirit, and I moved up and down restlessly 
in my darkness. ' What is it,' I cried, ' this outside 
world whither my mother is borne, and what reigns there 
in it so potent as to attract her so often?' At these 
moments my own force began to make me unquiet. I 
felt in it a power which could not remain idle ; and 
betaking myself either to toss my arms or to gallop 
backwards and forwards in the spacious darkness of the 
cavern, I tried to make out from the blows which I dealt 
in the empty space, or from the transport of my course 
through it, in what direction my arms were meant to 
reach, or my feet to bear me. Since that day, I have 
wound my arms round the bust of Centaurs, and round 
the body of heroes, and round the trunk of oaks ; my 
hands have assayed the rocks, the waters, plants without 
number, and the subtlest impressions of the air, — for 
I uplift them in the dark and still nights to catch the 
breaths of wind, and to draw signs whereby I may augur 
my road ; my feet, — look, O Melampus, how worn they 
are ! And yet, all benumbed as I am in this extremity 
of age, there are days when, in broad sunlight, on the 
mountain-tops, I renew these gallopings of my youth in 
the cavern, and with the same object, brandishing my 
arms and employing all the fleetness which yet is left 
to me. 

* * * * 



1IO MAURICE DE GUERTN. 

" Melampus, thou who wouldst know the life of the 
-Centaurs, wherefore have the gods willed that thy steps 
should lead thee to me, the oldest and most forlorn of 
them all? It is long since I have ceased to practise 
any part of their life. I quit no more this mountain 
summit, to which age has confined me. The point of 
my arrows now serves me only to uproot some tough- 
fibred plant ; the tranquil lakes know me still, but the 
rivers have forgotten me. I will tell thee a little of my 
youth ; but these recollections, issuing from a worn 
memory, come like the drops of a niggardly libation 
poured from a damaged urn. 

" The course of my youth was rapid and full of agitation. 
Movement was my life, and my steps knew no bound. 
One day when I was following the course of a valley 
seldom entered by the Centaurs, I discovered a man 
making his way up the stream-side on the opposite bank. 
He was the first whom my eyes had lighted on : I de- 
spised him. ' Behold,' I cried, ' at the utmost but the 
half of what I am ! How short are his steps ! and his 
movement how full of labour ! Doubtless he is a Cen- 
taur overthrown by the gods, and reduced by them to 
drag himself along thus.' 



" Wandering along at my own will like the rivers, 
feeling wherever I went the presence of Cybele, whether 
in the bed of the valleys, or on the height of the moun- 
tains, I bounded whither I would, like a blind and 
chainless life. But when Night, filled with the charm of 
the gods, overtook me on the slopes of the mountain, 



MAURICE DE GUERIN. Ill 

she guided me to the mouth of the caverns, and there 
tranquillised me as she tranquillises the billows of the 
sea. Stretched across the threshold of my retreat, my 
flanks hidden within the cave, and my head under the 
open sky, I watched the spectacle of the dark. The 
sea-gods, it is said, quit during the hours of darkness 
their palaces under the deep ; they seat themselves on 
the promontories, and their eyes wander over the ex- 
panse of the waves. Even so I kept watch, having at 
my feet an expanse of life like the hushed sea. My 
regards had free range, and travelled to the most distant 
points. Like sea-beaches which never lose their wetness, 
the line of mountains to the west retained the imprint of 
gleams not perfectly wiped out by the shadows. In that 
quarter still survived, in pale clearness, mountain-sum- 
mits naked and pure. There I beheld at one time the 
god Pan descend, ever solitary ; at another, the choir of 
the mystic divinities j or I saw pass some mountain- 
nymph charm-struck by the night. Sometimes the eagles 
of Mount Olympus traversed the upper sky, and were 
lost to view among the far-off constellations, or in the 
shade of the dreaming forests. 

" Thou pursuest after wisdom, O Melampus, which is 
the science of the will of the gods ; and thou roamest 
from people to people like a mortal driven by the des- 
tinies. In the times when I kept my night-watches 
before the caverns, I have sometimes believed that I was 
about to surprise the thought of the sleeping Cybele, and 
that the mother of the gods, betrayed by her dreams, 
would let fall some of her secrets ; but I have never 
made out more than sounds which faded away in the 



112 MAURICE DE GUERIN. 

murmur of night, or words inarticulate as the bubbling 
of the rivers. 

" ' O Macareus/ one day said the great Chiron to me, 
whose old age I tended ; ' we are, both of us, Centaurs 
of the mountain ; but how different are our lives ! Of 
my days all the study is (thou seest it) the search for 
plants; thou, thou art like those mortals who have picked 
up on the waters or in the woods, and carried to their 
lips, some pieces of the reed-pipe thrown away by the 
god Pan. From that hour these mortals, having caught 
from their relics of the god a passion for wild life, or 
perhaps smitten with some secret madness, enter into 
the wilderness, plunge among the forests, follow the course 
of the streams, bury themselves in the heart of the 
mountains, restless, and haunted by an unknown purpose. 
The mares beloved of the winds in the farthest Scythia 
are not wilder than thou, nor more cast down at nightfall, 
when the North Wind has departed. Seekest thou to 
know the gods, O Macareus, and from what source men, 
animals, and the elements of the universal fire have their 
origin ? But the aged Ocean, the father of all things, 
keeps locked within his own breast these secrets ; and 
the nymphs, who stand around, sing as they weave their 
eternal dance before him, to cover any sound which 
might escape from his lips half-opened by slumber. The 
mortals, dear to the gods for their virtue, have received 
from their hands lyres to give delight to man, or the 
seeds of new plants to make him rich ; but from their 
inexorable lips, nothing ! ' 

* # # * 

" Such were the lessons which the old Chiron gave 



MAURICE DE GUERIN. 113 

me. Waned to the very extremity of life, the Centau 
yet nourished in his spirit the most lofty discourse. 
* * * * 

" For me, O Melampus, I decline into my last days, 
calm as the setting of the constellations. I still retain 
enterprise enough to climb to the top of the rocks, and 
there I linger late, either gazing on the wild and restless 
clouds, or to see come up from the horizon the rainy 
Hyades, the Pleiades, or the great Orion ; but I feel my- 
self perishing and passing quickly away, like a snow- 
wreath floating on the stream; and soon I shall be 4 
mingled with the waters which flow in the vast bosom 
of Earth." 



[ "4 ] 



EUGENIE DE GUERIN. 

Who that had spoken of Maurice de Guerin could refrain 
from speaking of his sister Eugenie, the most devoted 
of sisters, one of the rarest and most beautiful of souls ? 
" There is nothing fixed, no duration, no vitality in the 
sentiments of women towards one another; their attach- 
ments are mere pretty bows of ribbon, and no more. 
In all the friendships of women I observe this slightness 
of the tie. I know no instance to the contrary, even in 
history. Orestes and Pylades have no sisters." So she 
herself speaks of the friendships of her own sex. But 
Electra can attach herself to Orestes, if not to Chryso- 
themis. And to her brother Maurice, Eugenie de Guerin 
was Pylades and Electra in one. 

The name of Maurice de Guerin, — that young man so 
gifted, so attractive, so careless of fame, and so early 
snatched away ; who died at twenty-nine : who, says his 
sister, " let what he did be lost with a carelessness so 
unjust to himself, set no value on any of his own pro- 
ductions, and departed hence without reaping the rich 
harvest which seemed his due ;" who, in spite of his" 
immaturity, in spite of his fragility, exercised such a 
charm, " furnished to others so much of that which all 
live by/'' that some years after his death his sister found 



EUGENIE DE GUERIN. 115 

in a country-house where he used to stay, in the journal 
of a young girl who had not known him, but who heard 
her family speak of him, his name, the date of his death, 
and these words, " il etait leur vie " (he was their life) ; 
whose talent, exquisite as that of Keats, with less of sun- 
light, abundance, and facility in it than that of Keats, 
but with more of distinction and power, had "that 
winning, delicate, and beautifully happy turn of expres- 
sion " which is the stamp of the master, — is beginning 
to be well known to all lovers of literature. This esta- 
blishment of Maurice's name was an object for which 
his sister Eugenie passionately laboured. While he was 
alive, she placed her whole joy in the flowering of this 
gifted nature ; when he was dead, she had no other 
thought than to make the world know him as she knew 
him. She outlived him nine years, and her cherished 
task for those years was to rescue the fragments of her 
brother's composition, to collect them, to get them pub- 
lished. In pursuing this task she had at first cheering 
hopes of success ; she had at last baffling and bitter 
disappointment. Her earthly business was at an end ; 
she died. Ten years afterwards, it was permitted to 
the love of a friend, M. Trebutien, to effect for Maurice's 
memory what the love of a sister had failed to 
accomplish. But those who read, with delight and 
admiration, the journal and letters of Maurice de Gue'rin, 
could not but be attracted and touched by this sister 
Eugenie, who met them at every page. She seemed 
hardly less gifted, hardly less interesting, than Maurice 
himself. And presently M. Trebutien did for the sister 
what he had done for the brother. He published the 
1 2 



Il6 EUGENIE DE GUERIN. 

journal of Mdlle. Eugenie de Guerin, and a few (too 
few, alas !) of her letters.* The book has made a 
profound impression in France ; and the fame which 
she sought only for her brother now crowns the sister 
also. 

Parts of Mdlle. de Guerin's journal were several years 
ago printed for private circulation, and a writer in the 
National Review had the good fortune to fall in with 
them. The bees of our English criticism do not often 
roam so far afield for their honey, and this critic deserves 
thanks for having flitted in his quest of blossom to 
foreign parts, and for having settled upon a beautiful 
flower found there. He had the discernment to see 
that Mdlle. de Guerin was well worth speaking of, and 
he spoke of her with feeling and appreciation. But 
that, as I have said, was several years ago ; even a true 
and feeling homage needs to be from time to time re- 
newed, if the memory of its object is to endure ; and 
criticism must not lose the occasion offered by Mdlle. 
de Guerin's journal being for the first time published 
to the world, of directing notice once more to this 
religious and beautiful character. 

Eugenie de Guerin was born in 1805, at the chateau 
of Le Cayla, in Languedoc. Her family, though reduced 
in circumstances, was noble ; and even when one is a 
saint one cannot quite forget that one comes of the stock 
of the Guarini of Italy, or that one counts among one's 
ancestors a Bishop of Senlis, who had the marshalling of 

* A volume of these, also, has just been brought out by M. 
Trebutien. One good book, at least, in the literature of the year 
1865 ! 



EUGENIE DE GUERIN. 1 1 7 

the French order of battle on the day of Bouvines. Le 
Cayla was a solitary place, with its terrace looking down 
upon a stream-bed and valley ; " one may pass days 
there without seeing any living thing but the sheep, 
without hearing any living thing but the birds." M. de 
Guerin, Eugenie's father, lost his wife when Eugenie was 
thirteen years old, and Maurice seven ; he was left with 
four children, — Eugenie, Marie, Erembert, and Maurice, 
— of whom Eugenie was the eldest, and Maurice was the 
youngest. This youngest child, whose beauty and delicacy 
had made him the object of his mother's most anxious 
fondness, was commended by her in dying to the care 
of his sister Eugenie. Maurice at eleven years old went 
to school at Toulouse ; then he went to the College 
Stanislas at Paris; then he became a member of the 
religious society which M. de Lamennais had formed at 
La Chenaie in Brittany; afterwards he lived chiefly at 
Paris, returning to Le Cayla, at the age of twenty -nine, 
to die. Distance, in those days, was a great obstacle to 
frequent meetings of the separated members of a French 
family of narrow means. Maurice de Guerin was seldom 
at Le Cayla after he had once quitted it, though his few 
visits to his home were long ones ; but he passed five 
years, — the period of his sojourn in Brittany, and of his 
first settlement in Paris, — without coming home at all. 
In spite of the check from these absences, in spite of 
the more serious check from a temporary alteration in 
Maurice's religious feelings, the union between the 
brother and sister was wonderfully close and firm. For 
they were knit together, not only by the tie of blood and 
early attachment, but also by the tie of a common 



-1 1 8 EUGENIE DE GUERIN. 

genius. " We were," says Eugenie, " two eyes looking 
out of one head." She, on her part, brought to her 
love for her brother the devotedness of a woman, the 
intensity of a recluse, almost the solicitude of a mother. 
Her home duties prevented her from following the wish, 
which often arose in her, to join a religious sisterhood. 
There is a trace, — just a trace, — of an early attachment 
to a cousin ; but he died when she was twenty-four. 
After that, she lived for Maurice. It was for Maurice 
that, in addition to her constant correspondence with 
him by letter, she began in 1834 her journal, which was 
sent to him by portions as it was finished. After his 
death she tried to continue it, addressing it " to Maurice 
in Heaven." But the effort was beyond her strength ; 
gradually the entries become rarer and rarer ; and on the 
last day of December, 1840, the pen dropped from her 
hand : the journal ends. 

Other sisters have loved their brothers, and it is not 
her affection for Maurice, admirable as this was, which 
alone could have made Eugenie de Guerin celebrated. 
I have said that both brother and sister had genius : 
M. Sainte-Beuve goes so far as to say that the sister's 
genius was equal, if not superior, to her brother's. No 
one has a more profound respect for M. Sainte-Beuve's 
critical judgments than I have ; but it seems to me that 
this particular judgment needs to be a little explained 
and guarded. In Maurice's special talent, which was a 
talent for interpreting nature, for finding words which 
incomparably render the subtlest impressions which 
nature makes upon us, which bring the intimate life of 
nature wonderfully near to us, it seems to me that his 



EUGENIE DE GUERIN. I19 

sister was by no means his equal. She never, indeed, 
expresses herself without grace and intelligence; but 
her words, when she speaks of the life and appearances 
of nature, are in general but intellectual signs ; they are 
not like her brother's — symbols equivalent with the thing 
symbolised. They bring the notion of the thing de- 
scribed to the mind, they do not bring the feeling of it 
to the imagination. Writing from the Nivernais, that 
region of vast woodlands in the centre of France : " It 
does one good," say Eugenie, " to be going about in 
the midst of this enchanting nature, with flowers, birds, 
and verdure all round one, under this large and blue 
sky of the Nivernais. How I love the gracious form of 
it and those little white clouds here and there, like 
cushions of cotton, hung aloft to rest the eye in this 
immensity ! " It is pretty and graceful, but how different 
from the grave and pregnant strokes of Maurice's pencil ! 
" I have been along the Loire, and seen on its banks the 
plains where nature is puissant and gay ; I have seen royal 
and antique dwellings, all marked by memories which 
have their place in the mournful legend of humanity, 
— Chambord, Blois, Amboise, Chenonceaux ; then the 
towns on the two banks of the river, — Orleans, Tours, 
Saumur, Nantes ; and, at the end of it all, the Ocean 
rumbling. From these I passed back into the interior 
of the country, as far as Bourges and Nevers, a region 
of vast woodlands, in which murmurs of an immense 
range and fulness " (ce beau torrent de rumeurs, as, with 
an expression worthy of Wordsworth, he elsewhere calls 
them) " prevail and never cease." Words whose charm 
is like that of the sounds of the murmuring forest itself, 



120 EUGENIE DE GUERIN. 

and whose reverberations, like theirs, die away in the 
infinite distance of the soul. 

Maurice's life was in the life of nature, and the passion 
for it consumed him ; it would have been strange if his 
accent had not caught more of the soul of nature than 
Eugenie's accent, whose life was elsewhere. " You will 
find in him," Maurice says to his sister of a friend whom 
he was recommending to her, " you will find in him that 
which you love, and which suits you better than anything 
else, — Ponciion, Peffiision, la mysticite." Unction, the 
pouring out of the soul, the rapture of the mystic, were 
dear to Maurice also ; but in him the bent of his genius 
gave even to those a special direction of its own. In 
Eugenie they took the direction most native and familiar 
to them ; their object was the religious life. 

And yet, if one analyses this beautiful and most in- 
teresting character quite to the bottom, it is not exactly as 
a saint that Eugenie de Guerin is remarkable. The ideal 
saint is a nature like Saint Francois de Sales or Fenelon; 
a nature of ineffable sweetness and serenity, a nature in 
which struggle and revolt is over, and the whole man 
(so far as is possible to human infirmity) swallowed up in 
love. Saint Theresa (it is Mdlle. de Guerin herself who 
jeminds us of it) endured twenty years of unacceptance 
and of repulse in her prayers; yes, but the Saint Theresa 
whom Christendom knows is Saint Theresa repulsed no 
longer ! it is Saint Theresa accepted, rejoicing in love, 
radiant with ecstasy. Mdlle. de Guerin is not one of 
these saints arrived at perfect sweetness and calm, steeped 
in ecstasy; there is something primitive, indomitable in 
her, which she governs, indeed, but which chafes, which 



EUGENIE DE GUERIN. 121 

revolts ; somewhere in the depths of that strong nature 
there is a struggle, an impatience, an inquietude, an ennui, 
which endures to the end, and which leaves one, when 
one finally closes her journal, with an impression of pro- 
found melancholy. " There are days," she writes to her 
brother, " when one's nature rolls itself up, and becomes 
a hedgehog. If I had you here at this moment, here 
close by me, how I should prick you ! how sharp and 
hard ! " " Poor soul, poor soul," she cries out to herself 
another day, " what is the matter, what would you have ? 
Where is that which will do you good ? Everything is 
green, everything is in bloom, all the air has a breath ot 
flowers. How beautiful it is ! well, I will go out. No, I 
should be alone, and all this beauty, when one is alone, 
is worth nothing. What shall I do then ? Read, write, 
pray, take a basket of sand on my head like that hermit- 
saint, and walk with it ? Yes, work, work ! keep busy 
the body which does mischief to the soul ! I have been 
too little occupied to-day, and that is bad for one, and 
it gives a certain ennui which I have in me time to 
ferment." 

A certai?i ennui which I have in me : her wound is 
there. In vain she follows the counsel of Fe'nelon : " If 
God tires you, tell him that he tires you." No doubt 
she obtained great and frequent solace and restoration 
from prayer : " This morning I was suffering ; well, at 
present I am calm, and this I owe to faith, simply to 
faith, to an act of faith. I can think of death and 
eternity without trouble, without alarm. Over a deep of 
sorrow there floats a divine calm, a suavity which is the 
work of God only. In vain have I tried other things at 



122 EUGENIE DE GUERIN. 

a time like this : nothing human comforts the soul, 
nothing human upholds it : — 

* A 1' enfant il faut sa mere, 
A mon ame il faut mon Dieu.' " 

Still the ennui reappears, bringing with it hours of un- 
utterable forlornness, and making her cling to her one 
great earthly happiness, — her affection for her brother, — 
with an intenseness, an anxiety, a desperation in which 
there is something morbid, and by which she is occa- 
sionally carried into an irritability, a jealousy, which she 
herself is the first, indeed, to censure, which she severely 
represses, but which nevertheless leaves a sense of pain. 
Mdlle. de Guerin's admirers have compared her to 
Pascal, and in some respects the comparison is just. 
But she cannot exactly be classed with Pascal, any more 
than with Saint Francois de Sales. Pascal is a man, and 
the inexhaustible power and activity of his mind leave 
him no leisure for ennui. He has not the sweetness and 
serenity of the perfect saint ; he is, perhaps, " der strenge, 
kranke Pascal — the severe, morbid Pascal" — as Goethe 
(and, strange to say, Goethe at twenty-three, an age 
which usually feels Pascal's charm most profoundly) calls 
him ; but the stress and movement of the lifelong conflict 
waged in him between his soul and his reason keep him 
full of fire, full of agitation, and keep his reader, who 
witnesses this conflict, animated and excited ; the sense 
of forlornness and dejected weariness which clings to 
Eugenie de Guerin does not belong to Pascal. Eugenie 
-de Guerin is a woman, and longs for a state of firm 
happiness, for an affection in which she may repose ; the 



EUGENIE DE GUERIN. 1 23 

inward bliss of Saint Theresa or Fenelon would have 
satisfied her; denied this, she cannot rest satisfied with 
the triumphs of self-abasement, with the sombre joy of 
trampling the pride of life and of reason underfoot, of 
reducing all human hope and joy to insignificance; she 
repeats the magnificent words of Bossuet, words which 
both Catholicism and Protestantism have uttered with 
indefatigable iteration : " On trouve au fond de tout le 
vide et le ne'ant — at the bottom of every thing one finds empti- 
ness a?id nothingness" — but she feels, as every one but 
the true mystic must ever feel, their incurable sterility. 

She resembles Pascal, however, by the clearness and 
firmness of her intelligence, going straight and instinc- 
tively to the bottom of any matter she is dealing with, 
and expressing herself about it with incomparable pre- 
cision ; never fumbling with what she has to say, never 
imperfectly seizing or imperfectly presenting her thought. 
And to this admirable precision she joins a lightness of 
touch, a feminine ease and grace, a flowing facility which 
are her own. " I do not say," writes her brother Maurice, 
an excellent judge, " that I find in myself a dearth of 
expression; but I have not this abundance of yours, 
this productiveness of soul which streams forth, which 
courses along without ever failing, and always with an 
infinite charm." And. writing to her of some composi- 
tion of hers, produced after her religious scruples had for 
a long time kept her from the exercise of her talent : 
" You see, my dear Tortoise," he writes, " that your 
talent is no illusion, since after a period, I know not how 
long, of poetical inaction, — a trial to which any half-talent 
would have succumbed, — it rears its head again more 



124 EUGENIE DE GUERIN. 

vigorous than ever. It is really heart-breaking to see 
you repress and bind down, with I know not what 
scruples, your spirit, which tends with all the force of its 
nature to develop itself in this direction. Others have 
made it a case of conscience for you to resist this impulse, 
and I make it one for you to follow it." And she says 
of herself, on one of her freer days : " It is the instinct 
of my life to write, as it is the instinct of the fountain to 
flow." The charm of her expression is not a sensuous 
and imaginative charm like that of Maurice, but rather 
an intellectual charm ; it comes from the texture of the 
style rather than from its elements ; it is not so much in 
the words as in the turn of the phrase, in the happy cast 
and flow of the sentence. Recluse as she was, she had a 
great correspondence : every one wished to have letters 
from her j and no wonder. 

To this strength of intelligence and talent of expres- 
sion she joined a great force of character. Religion had 
early possessed itself of this force of character, and re- 
inforced it : in the shadow of the Cevennes, in the sharp 
and tonic nature of this region of southern France, which 
has seen the Albigensians, which has seen the Camisards, 
Catholicism too is fervent and intense. Eugenie de 
Guerin was brought up amidst strong religious influences, 
and they found in her a nature on which they could lay 
firm hold. I have said that she was not a saint of the 
order of Saint Francois de Sales or Fdnelon ; perhaps 
she had too keen an intelligence to suffer her to be this, 
too forcible and impetuous a character. But I did not 
mean to imply the least doubt of the reality, the pro- 
foundness, of her religious life. She was penetrated by 



EUGENIE DE GUERIN. 1 25 

the power of religion ; religion was the master-influence 
of her life ; she derived immense consolations from 
religion, she earnestly strove to conform her whole 
nature to it ; if there was an element in her which 
religion could not perfectly reach, perfectly transmute, 
she groaned over this element in her, she chid it, she 
made it bow. Almost every thought in her was brought 
into harmony with religion ; and what few thoughts were 
not thus brought into harmony were brought into sub- 
jection. 

Then she had her affection for her brother ; and this, 
too, though perhaps there might be in it something a 
little over-eager, a little too absolute, a little too sus- 
ceptible, was a pure, a devoted affection. It was not 
only passionate, it was tender. It was tender, pliant, 
and self-sacrificing to a degree that not in one nature out 
of a thousand, — of natures with a mind and will like hers, 
— is found attainable. She thus united extraordinary 
power of intelligence, extraordinary force of character, 
and extraordinary strength of affection; and all these 
under the control of a deep religious feeling. 

This is what makes her so remarkable, so interesting. 
I shall try and make her speak for herself, that she may 
show us the characteristic sides of her rare nature with 
her own inimitable touch. 

It must be remembered that her journal is written for 
Maurice only ; in her lifetime no eye but his ever saw it. 
" Ceci rtest pas pour le public" she writes \ " c'est de 
rintime, c'est de Tame, c'est pour un" " This is not for 
the public; it contains my inmost thoughts, my very 
soul ; it is for one." And Maurice, this one, was a kind 



126 EUGENIE DE GUERIN. 

of second self to her. "We see things with the same 
eyes ; what you find beautiful, I find beautiful ; God has 
made our souls of one piece." And this genuine confi- 
dence in her brother's sympathy gives to the entries in 
her journal a naturalness and simple freedom rare in such 
compositions. She felt that he would understand her, 
and be interested in all that she wrote. 

One of the first pages of her journal relates an inci- 
dent of the home-life of Le Cayla, the smallest detail of 
which Maurice liked to hear; and in relating it she 
brings this simple life before us. She is writing in 
November, 1834 : — 

" I am furious with the grey cat. The mischievous 
beast has made away with a little half-frozen pigeon, 
which I was trying to thaw by the side of the fire. The 
poor little thing was just beginning to come round ; I 
meant to tame him ; he would have grown fond of me ; 
and there is my whole scheme eaten up by a cat ! This 
event, and all the rest of to-day's history, has passed in 
the kitchen. Here I take up my abode all the morning 
and a part of the evening, ever since I am without 
Mimi.* I have to superintend the cook ; sometimes 
papa comes down, and I read to him by the oven, or by 
the fireside, some bits out of the Antiquities of the Anglo- 
Saxon Church. This book struck Pierrilf with astonish- 
ment. ' Que de mouts aqui dedins ! What a lot of words 
there are inside it ! ' This boy is a real original. One 
evening he asked me if the soul was immortal; then 
afterwards, what a philosopher was ? We had got upon 

* The familiar name of her sister Marie. 
t A servant-bay at Le Cayla. 



EUGENIE DE GUERIN. 1 27 

great questions, as you see. When I told him that a 
philosopher was a person who was wise and learned : 
' Then, mademoiselle, you are a philosopher.' This was 
said with an air of simplicity and sincerity which might 
have made even Socrates take it as a compliment ; but 
it made me laugh so much that my gravity as catechist 
was gone for that evening. A day or two ago Pierril left 
us, to his great sorrow : his time with us was up on Saint 
Brice's day. Now he goes about with his little dog, 
truffle-hunting. If he comes this way I shall go and ask 
him if he still thinks I look like a philosopher." 

Her good sense and spirit made her discharge with 
alacrity her household tasks in this patriarchal life of Le 
Cayla, and treat them as the most natural thing in the 
world. She sometimes complains, to be sure, of burning 
her fingers at the kitchen-fire. But when a literary friend 
of her brother expresses enthusiasm about her and her 
poetical nature : " The poetess," she says, " whom this 
gentleman believes me to be, is an ideal being, infinitely 
removed from the life which is actually mine — a life of 
occupations, a life of household-business, which takes up 
all my time. How could I make it otherwise ? I am 
sure I do not know ; and, besides, my duty is in this 
sort of life, and I have no wish to escape from it." 

Among these occupations of the patriarchal life of 
the chatelaine of Le Cayla intercourse with the poor 
fills a prominent place : — 

" To-day," she writes on the 9th of December, 1834, 
" I have been warming myself at every fireside in the 
village. It is a round which Mimi and I often make, 
and in which I take pleasure. To-day we have been 



128 EUGENIE DE GUERIN. 

seeing sick people, and holding forth on doses and sick- 
room drinks. ' Take this, do that ; " and they attend to 
us just as if we were the doctor. We prescribed shoes 
for a little thing who was amiss from having gone bare- 
foot; to the brother, who, with a bad headache, was 
lying quite flat, we prescribed a pillow.; the pillow did 
him good, but I am afraid it will hardly cure him. He 
is at the beginning of a bad feverish cold : and these 
poor people live in the filth of their hovels like animals 
in their stable ; the bad air poisons them. When I 
come home to Le Cayla I seem to be in a palace." 

She had books, too ; not in abundance, not for the 
fancying them ; the list of her library is small, and it is 
enlarged slowly and with difficulty. The Letters of Saint 
Theresa, which she had long wished to get, she sees in 
the hands of a poor servant girl, before she can procure 
them for herself. " What then ? " is her comment : 
" very likely she makes a better use of them than I 
could." But she has the Imitation, the Spiritual Works 
of Bossuet and Fe'nelon, the Lives of the Saints, Corneille, 
Racine, Andre Chenier, and Lamartine; Madame de 
Stael's book on Germany, and French translations of 
Shakspeare's plays, Ossian, the Vicar of Wakefield, Scott's 
Old Mortality and Redgauntlet, and the Promessi Sposi of 
Manzoni. Above all, she has her own mind ; her medi- 
tations in the lonely fields, on the oak-grown hill-side of 
" The Seven Springs ; " her meditations and writing in 
her own room, her chambrette, her delicieux chez moi, 
where every night, before she goes to bed, she opens 
the window to look out upon the sky, — the balmy moon- 
lit sky of Languedoc. This life of reading, thinking, 



EUGENIE DE GUERIN. 1 29 

and writing was the life she liked best, the life that most 
truly suited her. " I find writing has become almost a 
necessity to me. Whence does it arise, this impulse to 
give utterance to the voice of one's spirit, to pour out my 
thoughts before God and one human being ? I say one 
human being, because I always imagine that you are 
present, that you see what I write. In the stillness of a 
life like this my spirit is happy, and, as it were, dead to 
all that goes on upstairs or downstairs, in the house or 
out of the house. But this dees not last long. ' Come, 
my poor spirit,' I then say to myself, ' we must go back 
to the things of this world.' And I take my spinning, or 
a book, or a saucepan, or I play with Wolf or Trilby. 
Such a life as this I call heaven upon earth." 

Tastes like these, joined with a talent like Mdlle. de 
Guerin's, naturally inspire thoughts of literary compo- 
sition. Such thoughts she had, and perhaps she would 
have been happier if she had followed them ; but she 
never could satisfy herself that to follow them was quite 
consistent with the religious life, and her projects of 
composition were gradually relinquished : — 

" Would to God that my thoughts, my spirit had 
never taken their flight beyond the narrow round in 
which it is my lot to live ! In spite of all that people 
say to the contrary, I feel that I cannot go beyond my 
needlework and my spinning without going too far : I 
feel it, I believe it : well, then, I will keep in my proper 
sphere \ however much I am tempted, my spirit shall not 
be allowed to occupy itself with great matters until it 
occupies itself with them in Heaven." 

And again : — 

K 



130 EUGENIE DE GUERIN. 

" My journal has been untouched for a long while. 
Do you want to know why? It is because the time 
seems to me misspent which I spend in writing it. We 
owe God an account of every minute ; and is it not a 
wrong use of our minutes to employ them in writing 
a history of our transitory days ? " 

She overcomes her scruples, and goes on writing the 
journal ; but again and again they return to her. Her 
brother tells her of the pleasure and comfort something 
she has written gives to a friend of his in affliction. She 
answers : — 

" It is from the Cross that those thoughts come, which 
your friends finds so soothing, so unspeakably tender. 
None of them come from me. I feel my own aridity ; 
but I feel, too, that God, when he will, can make an 
ocean flow upon this bed of sand. It is the same with 
so many simple souls, from w T hich proceed the most 
admirable things ; because they are in direct relation 
with God, without false science and without pride. And 
thus I am gradually losing my taste for books ; I say to 
myself : ' What can they teach me which I shall not one 
day know in Heaven ? let God be my master and my 
study here ! ' I try to make him so, and I find myself 
the better for it. I read little ; I go out little ; I plunge 
myself in the inward life. How infinite are the sayings, 
doings, feelings, events of that life ! Oh, if you could 
but see them ! But what avails it to make them known ? 
God alone should be admitted to the sanctuary of the 
soul/' 

Beautifully as she says all this, one cannot, I think, 
read it without a sense of disquietude, without a presenti- 



EUGENIE DE GUERIN. I31 

• / 

ment that this ardent spirit is forcing itself from his 
natural bent, that the beatitude of the true mystic will 
never be its earthly portion. And yet how simple and 
charming is her picture of the life of religion which she 
chose as her ark of refuge, and in which she desired to 
place all her happiness : — 

" Cloaks, clogs, umbrellas, all the apparatus of winter, 
went with us this morning to And iliac, where we have 
passed the whole day ; some of it at the cure's house, 
the rest in church. How I like this life of a country 
Sunday, with its activity, its journeys to church, its live- 
liness ! You find all your neighbours on the road ; you 
have a curtsey from every woman you meet, and then, 
as you go along, such a talk about the poultry, the sheep 
and cows, the good man and the children ! My great 
delight is to give a kiss to these children, and see them 
run away and hide their blushing faces in their mother's 
gown. They are alarmed at las doiima'iselos* as at a ' 
being of another world. One of these little things said 
the other day to its grandmother, who was talking of 
coming to see us : ' Minino, you mustn't go to that castle ; 
there is a black hole there.' What is the reason that in 
all ages the noble's chateau has been an object of terror ? 
Is it because of the horrors that were committed there 
in old times? I suppose so." 

This vague horror of the chateau, still lingering in the 
mind of the French peasant fifty years after he has stormed 
it, is indeed curious, and is one of the thousand indica- 
tions how unlike aristocracy on the Continent has been 
to aristocracy in England. But this is one of the great 
* The young lady. 
K 2 



I32 EUGENIE DE GUERIN. 

matters with which Mdlle. de Guerin would not have us 
occupied; let us pass to the subject of Christmas in 
Languedoc : — 

" Christmas is come ; the beautiful festival, the one I 
love most, and which gives me the same joy as it gave 
the shepherds of Bethlehem. In real truth, one's whole 
soul sings with joy at this beautiful coming of God upon 
earth, — a coming which here is announced on all sides of 
us by music and by our charming nadalet.* Nothing at 
Paris can give you a notion of what Christmas is with us. 
You have not even the midnight-mass. We all of us 
went to it, papa at our head, on the most perfect night 
possible. Never was there a finer sky than ours was that 
midnight; — so fine that papa kept perpetually throw- 
ing back the hood of his cloak, that he might look up at 
the sky. The ground was white with hoar-frost, but we 
were not cold ; besides, the air, as we met it, was warmed 
by the bundles of blazing torchwood which our servants 
carried in front of us to light us on our way. It was 
delightful, I do assure you ; and I should like you to 
have seen us there on our road to church, in those lanes 
with the bushes along their banks as white as if they 
were in flower. The hoar-frost makes the most lovely 
flowers. We saw a long spray so beautiful that we 
wanted to take it with us as a garland for the communion- 
table, but it melted in our hands : all flowers fade so 
soon ! I was very sorry about my garland ; it was 
mournful to see it drip away, and get smaller and smaller 
every minute." 

* A peculiar peal rung at Christmas-time by the church bells of 
Languedoc. 



EUGENIE DE GUERIN. 133 

The religious life is at bottom everywhere alike ; but 
it is curious to note the variousness of its setting and out- 
ward circumstance. Catholicism has these so different 
from Protestantism ! and in Catholicism these accessories 
have, it cannot be denied, a nobleness and amplitude 
which in Protestantism is often wanting to them. In 
Catholicism they have, from the antiquity of this form of 
religion, from its pretensions to universality, from its really 
wide-spread prevalence, from its sensuousness, some- 
thing European, august, and imaginative : in Protestantism 
they often have, from its inferiority in all these respects, 
something provincial, mean, and prosaic. In revenge, 
Protestantism has a future before it, a prospect of growth 
in alliance with the vital movement of modern society ; 
while Catholicism appears to be bent on widening the 
breach between itself and the modern spirit, to be fatally 
losing itself in the multiplication of dogmas, Mariolatry, 
and miracle-mongering. But the style and circumstance 
of actual Catholicism is grander than its present ten- 
dency, and the style and circumstance of Protestantism 
is meaner than its tendency. While I was reading the 
journal of Mdlle. de Guerin, there came into my hands 
the memoir and poems of a young Englishwoman, Miss 
Emma Tatham ; and one could not but be struck with 
the singular contrast which the two lives, — in their setting 
rather than in their inherent quality, — present. Miss 
Tatham had not, certainly, Mdlle. de Guerin's talent, but 
she had a sincere vein of poetic feeling, a genuine apti- 
tude for composition. Both were fervent Christians, and, 
so far, the two lives have a real resemblance j but, in the 
setting of them, what a difference ! The Frenchwoman 



134 EUGENIE DE GUERIX. 

is a Catholic in Languedoc; the Englishwoman is a 
Protestant at Margate ; Margate, that brick-and-mortar 
image of English Protestantism, representing it in all its 
prose, all its uncomeliness, — let me add, all its salubrity. 
Between the external form and fashion of these two lives, 
between the Catholic Mdlle. de Guerin's 7iadalet at the 
Languedoc Christmas, her chapel of moss at Easter- 
time, her daily reading of the life of a saint, carrying 
her to the most diverse times, places, and peoples, — her 
quoting, when she wants to fix her mind upon the stanch- 
ness which the religious aspirant needs, the words of 
Saint Macedonius to a hunter whom he met in the 
mountains, " I pursue after God, as you pursue after 
game," — her quoting, when she wants to break a village 
girl of disobedience to her mother, the story of the ten 
disobedient children whom at Hippo Saint Augustine saw 
palsied ; — between all this and the bare, blank, narrowly 
English setting of Miss Tatham's Protestantism, her 
" union in church-fellowship with the worshippers at 
Hawley-Square Chapel, Margate f her " singing with 
soft, sweet voice, the animating lines — 

' My Jesus to know, and feel his blood flow, 
Tis life everlasting, 'tis heaven below ; ' " 

her " young female teachers belonging to the Sunday- 
school," and her " Mr. Thomas Rowe, a venerable class- 
leader," — what a dissimilarity ! In the ground of the 
two lives, a likeness ; in all their circumstance, what un- 
likeness ! An unlikeness, it will be said, in that which 
is non-essential and indifferent. Non-essential, — yes ; 
indifferent, — no. The signal want of grace and charm in 



EUGENIE DE GUERIN. 135 

English Protestantism's setting of its religious life is 
not an indifferent matter ; it is a real weakness. This 
ought ye to have do?ie, and not to have left the other 
undone. 

I have said that the present tendency of Catholicism, 
— the Catholicism of the main body of the Catholic 
clergy and laity, — seems likely to exaggerate rather than 
to remove all that in this form of religion is most repug- 
nant to reason ; but this Catholicism was not that of 
Mdlle. de Guerin. The insufficiency of her Catholicism 
comes from a doctrine which Protestantism, too, has 
adopted, although Protestantism, from its inherent 
element of freedom, may find it easier to escape from 
it ; a doctrine with a certain attraction for all noble 
natures, but, in the modern world at any rate, incurably 
sterile, — the doctrine of the emptiness and nothingness 
of human life, of the superiority of renouncement to 
activity, of quietism to energy; the doctrine which makes 
effort for things on this side of the grave a folly, and joy 
in things on this side of the grave a sin. But her Catho- 
licism is remarkably free from the faults which Protes- 
tants commonly think inseparable from Catholicism ; the 
relation to the priest, the practice of confession, assume, 
when she speaks of them, an aspect which is not that 
under which Exeter Hall knows them, but which, — unless 
one is of the number of those who prefer regarding that 
by which men and nations die to regarding that by which 
they live, — one is glad to study. " La confession," she 
says twice in her journal, " n'est qu'une expansion du 
repentir dans r amour;" and her weekly journey to the 
confessional in the little church of Cahuzac is her " cher 



136 EUGENIE DE GUERIN. 

pelerinage;" the little church is the place where she has 
" laisse tant de miser es" 

" This morning," she writes, one 28th of November, 
" I was up before daylight, dressed quickly, said my 
prayers, and started with Marie for Cahuzac. When we 
got there, the chapel was occupied, which I was not 
sorry for. I like not to be hurried, and to have time, 
before I go in, to lay bare my soul before God. This 
often takes me a long time, because my thoughts are apt 
to be flying about like these autumn leaves. At ten 
o'clock I was on my knees, listening to words the most 
salutary that were ever spoken ; and I went away, feeling 
myself a better being. Every burden thrown off leaves 
us with a sense of brightness ; and when the soul has 
laid down the load of its sins at God's feet, it feels as if 
it had wings. What an admirable thing is confession ! 
What comfort, what light, what strength is given me 
every time after I have said, I have sinned." 

This blessing of confession is the greater she says, 
" the more the heart of the priest to whom we confide 
our repentance is like that divine heart which ' has so 
loved us.' This is what attaches me to M. Bories." M. 
Bories was the cure of her parish, a man no longer 
young, and of whose loss, when he was about to leave 
them, she thus speaks : — 

" What a grief for me ! how much I lose in losing 
this faithful guide of my conscience, heart, and mind, of 
my whole self, which God has appointed to be in his 
charge, and which let itself be in his charge so gladly ! 
He knew the resolves which God had put in my heart, 
and I had need of his help to follow them. Our new 






EUGENIE DE GUERIN. 137 

cure cannot supply his place : he is so young ! and 
then he seems so inexperienced, so undecided ! It 
needs firmness to pluck a soul out of the midst of the 
world, and to uphold it against the assaults of flesh and 
blood. It is Saturday, my day for going to Cahuzac ; I 
am just going there, perhaps I shall come back more 
tranquil. God has always given me some good thing 
there, in that chapel where I have left behind me so 
many miseries." 

Such is confession for her when the priest is worthy ; 
and, when he is not worthy, she knows how to separate 
the man from the office : — 

" To-day I am going to do something which I dislike ; 
but I will do it, with God's help. Do not think I am on 
my way to the stake ; it is only that I am going to con- 
fess to a priest in whom I have not confidence, but who 
is the only one here. In this act of religion the man 
must always be separated from the priest, and sometimes 
the man must be annihilated." 

The same clear sense, the same freedom from super- 
stition, shows itself in all her religious life. She tells us, 
to be sure, how once, when she was a little girl, she 
stained a new frock, and on praying, in her alarm, to an 
image of the Virgin which hung in her room, saw the 
stains vanish : even the austerest Protestant will not 
judge such Mariolatry as this very harshly. But, in 
general, the Virgin Mary fills, in the religious parts of 
her journal, no prominent place ; it is Jesus, not Mary. 
" Oh, how well has Jesus said : ' Come unto me, all ye 
that labour and are heavy laden.' It is only there, only 
in the bosom of God, that we can rightly weep, rightly 



138 EUGENIE DE GUERIN. 

rid ourselves of our burden." And again : " The mystery 
of suffering makes one grasp the belief of something to 
be expiated, something to be won. I see it in Jesus 
Christ, the Man of Sorrow. It was necessary that the 
Son of Man should suffer. That is all we know in 
the troubles and calamities of life." 

And who has ever spoken of justification more im- 
pressively and piously than Mdlle. de Guerin speaks of it, 
when, after reckoning the number of minutes she has 
lived, she exclaims : — 

" My God, what have we done with all these minutes 
of ours, which thou, too, wilt one day reckon ? Will 
there be any of them to count for eternal life ? will there 
be many of them? will there be one of them? 'If 
thou, O Lord, wilt be extreme to mark what is done 
amiss, O Lord, who may abide it ? ' This close scrutiny 
•of our time may well make us tremble, all of us who 
have advanced more than a few steps in life ; for God 
will judge us otherwise than as he judges the lilies of the 
field. I have never been able to understand the security 
of those who place their whole reliance, in presenting 
themselves before God, upon a good conduct in the 
ordinary relations of human life. As if all our duties 
were confined within the narrow sphere of this world ! 
To be a good parent, a good child, a good citizen, a 
good brother or sister, is not enough to procure entrance 
into the kingdom of heaven. God demands other things 
besides these kindly social virtues, of him whom he 
means to crown with an eternity of glory." 

And, with this zeal for the spirit and power of religion, 
what prudence in her counsels of religious practice 



EUGENIE DE GUERIN. 139 

what discernment, what measure ! She has been speaking 
of the charm of the Lives of the Saints , and she goes 
on: — 

" Notwithstanding this, the Lives of the Saints seem to 
me, for a great many people, dangerous reading. I 
would not recommend them to a young girl, or even to 
some women who are no longer young. What one reads 
has such power over one's feelings ; and these, even in 
seeking God, sometimes go astray. Alas, we have seen 
it in poor C.'s case. What care one ought to take with 
a young person \ with what she reads, what she writes, 
her society, her prayers, — all of them matters which 
demand a mother's tender watchfulness ! I remember 
many things I did at fourteen, which my mother, had 
she lived, would not have let me do. I would have 
done anything for God's sake ; I would have cast myself 
into an oven, and assuredly things like that are not God's 
will ; he is not pleased by the hurt one does to one's 
health through that ardent but ill-regulated piety which, 
while it impairs the body, often leaves many a fault - 
flourishing. And, therefore, Saint Francois de Sales 
used to say to the nuns who asked his leave to go bare- 
foot : ' Change your brains and keep your shoes.'" 

Meanwhile Maurice, in a five years' absence, and amid 
the distractions of Paris, lost, or seemed to his sister to 
lose, something of his fondness for his home and its 
inmates ; he certainly lost his early religious habits and 
feelings. It is on this latter loss that Mdlle. de Gue'rin's 
journal oftenest touches, — with infinite delicacy, but with 
infinite anguish : — 

" Oh, the agony of being in fear for a soul's salvation, 



14° EUGENIE DE GUERIX. 

who can describe it ! That which caused our Saviour 
the keenest suffering, in the agony of his Passion, was 
not so much the thought of the torments he was to 
endure, as the thought that these torments would be of 
no avail for a multitude of sinners ; for all those who set 
themselves against their redemption, or who do not care 
for it. The mere anticipation of this obstinacy and this 
heedlessness had power to make sorrowful, even unto 
death, the divine Son of Man. And this feeling all 
Christian souls, according to the measure of faith and 
love granted them, more or less share." 

Maurice returned to Le Cayla in the summer of 1837, 
and passed six months there. This meeting entirely 
restored the union between him and his family. " These 
six months with us," writes his sister, "he ill, and finding 
himself so loved by us all, had entirely reattached him to 
us. Five years without seeing us, had perhaps made him 
a little lose sight of our affection for him ; having found 
it again, he met it with all the strength of his own. He 
had so firmly renewed, before he left us, all family-ties 
that nothing but death could have broken them." Th 
separation in religious matters between the brother and 
sister gradually diminished, and before Maurice died it 
had ceased. I have elsewhere spoken of Maurice's 
religious feeling and its character. It is probable that 
his divergence from his sister in this sphere of religion 
was never so wide as she feared, and that his reunion 
with her was never so complete as she hoped. " His 
errors were passed," she says, " his illusions were cleared 
away ; by the call of his nature, by original disposition, 
he had come back to sentiments of order. I knew all, 



! 



EUGENIE DE GUERIN. 141 

I followed each of his steps ; out of the fiery sphere of 
the passions (which held him but a little moment) 1 saw 
him pass into the sphere of the Christian life. It was a 
beautiful soul, the soul of Maurice." But the illness 
which had caused his return to Le Cayla reappeared after 
he got back to Paris in the winter of 1837-8. Again 
he seemed to recover; and his marriage with a young 
Creole lady, Mdlle. Caroline de Gervain, took place in 
the autumn of 1838. At the end of September in that 
year Mdlle. de Guerin had joined her brother in Paris ; 
she was present at his marriage, and stayed with him 
and his wife for some months afterwards. Her journal 
recommences in April 1839; zealously as she had pro- 
moted her brother's marriage, cordial as were her rela- 
tions with her sister-in-law, it is evident that a sense of 
loss, of loneliness, invades her, and sometimes weighs 
her down. She writes in her journal on the 4th of 
May:— 

" God knows when we shall see one another again ! 
My own Maurice, must it be our lot to live apart, to find 
that this marriage, which I had so much share in bringing 
about, which I hoped would keep us so much together, 
leaves us more asunder than ever ? For the present and 
for the future, this troubles me more than I can say. 
My sympathies, my inclinations, carry me more towards 
you than towards any other member of our family. I have 
the misfortune to be fonder of you than of anything else 
in the world, and my heart had from of old built in you 
its happiness. Youth gone and life declining, I looked 
forward to quitting the scene with Maurice. At any time 
of life a great affection is a great happiness ; the spirit 



142 EUGENIE DE GUERIN. 

comes to take refuge in it entirely. O delight and joy 
which will never be your sister's portion ! Only in the 
direction of God shall I find an issue for my heart to 
love as it has the notion of loving, as it has the power 
of loving." 

From such complainings, in which there is undoubtedly 
something morbid, — complainings which she herself 
blamed, to which she seldom gave way, but which, in 
presenting her character, it is not just to put wholly out 
of sight, — she was called by the news of an alarming 
return of her brother's illness. For some days the entries 
in the journal show her agony of apprehension. " He 
coughs, he coughs still ! Those words keep echoing for 
ever in my ears, and pursue me wherever I go ; I cannot 
look at the leaves on the trees without thinking that the 
winter will come, and then the consumptive die." 
Then she went to him and brought him back by slow 
stages to Le Cayla, dying. He died on the 19th of 
July, 1839. 

Thenceforward the energy of life ebbed in her ; but 
the main chords of her being, the chord of affection, 
the chord of religious longing, the chord of intelligence, 
the chord of sorrow, gave, so long as they answered to 
the touch at all, a deeper and finer sound than ever. 
Always she saw before her, "that beloved pale face;" 
"that beautiful head, with all its different expressions, 
smiling, speaking, suffering, dying," regarded her always : — 
" I have seen his coffin in the same room, in the same 
spot where I remember seeing, when I was a very little 
girl, his cradle, when I was brought home from Gaillac, 
where I was then staying, for his christening. This 






EUGENIE DE GUERIN. 1 43 

christening was a grand one, full of rejoicing, more 
than that of any of the rest of us ; specially marked. I 
enjoyed myself greatly, and went back to Gaillac next 
day, charmed with my new little brother. Two years 
afterwards I came home, and brought with me for him a 
frock of my own making. I dressed him in the frock,, 
and took him out with me along by the warren at the 
north of the house, and there he walked a few steps 
alone, — his first walking alone, — and I ran with delight to 
tell my mother the news : ' Maurice, Maurice has begun 
to walk by himself!' — Recollections which, coming back 
to day, break one's heart I" 

The shortness and suffering of her brother's life filled 
her with an agony of pity. " Poor beloved soul, you have 
had hardly any happiness here below ; your life has been 
so short, your repose so rare. O God, uphold me, 
stablish my heart in thy faith ! Alas, I have too little 
of this supporting me ! How we have gazed at him 
and loved him, and kissed him, — his wife, and we, his 
sisters ; he lying lifeless in his bed, his head on the 
pillow as if he were asleep ! Then we followed him to 
the churchyard, to the grave, to his last resting-place,, 
and prayed over him, and wept over him ; and we are 
here again, and I am writing to him again, as if he were 
staying away from home, as if he were in Paris. My 
beloved one, can it be, shall we never see one another 
again on earth?" 

But in heaven? — and here, though love and hope 
finally prevailed, the very passion of the sister's longing 
sometimes inspired torturing inquietudes : — 

" I am broken down with miserv. I want to see him, 



144 EUGENIE DE GUERIN. 

Every moment I pray to God to grant me this grace. 
Heaven, the world of spirits, is it so far from us? O 
depth, O mystery of the other life which separates us ! 
I, who was so eagerly anxious about him, who wanted so 
to know all that happened to him, — wherever he may be 
now, it is over ! I follow him into the three abodes : I 
stop wistfully into the place of bliss ; I pass on to the place 
of suffering ; — to the gulf of fire. My God, my God, no ! 
Not there let my brother be ! not there ! And he is not : 
his soul, the soul of Maurice, among the lost .... 
horrible fear, no ! But in purgatory, where the soul is 
cleansed by suffering, where the failings of the heart are 
expiated, the doubtings of the spirit, the half-yieldings to 
evil ? Perhaps my brother is there and suffers, and calls 
to us amidst his anguish of repentance, as he used to call 
to us amidst his bodily suffering : ' Help me, you who 
love me.' Yes, beloved one, by prayer. I will go and 
pray ; prayer has been such a power to me, and I will 
pray to the end. Prayer ! Oh ! and prayer for the dead ; 
it is the dew of purgatory." 

Often, alas, the gracious dew would not fall ; the air 
of her soul was parched ; the arid wind, which was 
somewhere in the depths of her being, blew. She marks 
in her journal the first of May, "this return of the 
loveliest month in the year," only to keep up the old 
habit ; even the month of May can no longer give her 
any pleasure : " Tout est change — all is changed." She 
is crushed by " the misery which has nothing good in it, 
the tearless, dry misery, which bruises the heart like a 
hammer." 

"I am dying to everything. I am dying of a slow 



EUGENIE DE GUERIX. I45 

moral agony, a condition of unutterable suffering. Lie 
there, my poor journal ! be forgotten with all this world 
which is fading away from me. I will write here no more 
until I come to life again, until God re- awakens me out 
of this tomb in which my soul lies buried. Maurice, my 
beloved ! it was not thus with me when I had you I The 
thought of Maurice could revive me from the most 
profound depression : to have him in the world was 
enough for me. With Maurice, to be buried alive 
would have not seemed dull to me." 

And, as a burden to this funereal strain, the old vide 
et neant of Bossuet, profound, solemn, sterile : — 

"So beautiful in the morning, and in the evening, 
that ! how the thought disenchants one, and turns one 
from the world ! I can understand that Spanish grandee 
who, after lifting up the winding-sheet of a beautiful 
queen, threw himself into a cloister and became a great 
saint. I would have all my friends at La Trappe, in the 
interest of their eternal welfare. Not that in the world 
one cannot be saved, not that there are not in the world 
duties to be discharged as sacred and as beautiful as 
there are in the cloister, but . . . ." 

And there she stops, and a day or two afterwards her 
journal comes to an end. A few fragments, a few letters 
carry us on a little later, but after the 2 2d of August, 
1845, there is nothing. To make known her brother's 
genius to the world was the one task she set herself 
after his death; in 1840 came Madame Sand's noble 
tribute to him in the Revue des Deux Mondes ; then 
followed projects of raising a yet more enduring monu- 
ment to his fame, by collecting and publishing his 



146 EUGENIE DE GUERIN. 

scattered compositions ; these projects I have already 
said, were baffled ; — Mdlle. de Guerin's letter of the 22nd 
of August, 1845, relates to this disappointment. In 
silence, during nearly- three years more, she faded away 
at Le Cayla. She died on the 31st of May, 1848. 

M. Trebutien has accomplished this pious task in 
which Mdlle. de Guerin was baffled, and has established 
Maurice's fame ; by publishing this journal he has es- 
tablished Eugenie's also. She was very different from 
her brother ; but she too, like him, had that in her which 
preserves a reputation. Her soul had the same charac- 
teristic quality as his talent, — distinction. Of this quality 
the world is impatient ; it chafes against it, rails at it, 
insults it, hates it : it ends by receiving its influence, and 
by undergoing its law. This quality at last inexorably 
corrects the world's blunders, and fixes the world's ideals. 
It procures that the popular poet shall not finally pass 
for a Pindar, nor the popular historian for a Tacitus, nor 
the popular preacher for a Bossuet. To the circle of 
spirits marked by this rare quality, Maurice and Eugenie 
de Guerin belong ; they will take their place in the sky 
which these inhabit, and shine close to one another, 
lucida sidera. 



[ 147 ] 



HEINRICH HEINE. 

*' I know not if I deserve that a laurel-wreath should 
one day be laid on my coffin. Poetry, dearly as I have 
loved it, has always been to me but a divine plaything. 
I have never attached any great value to poetical fame ; 
and I trouble myself very little whether people praise my 
verses or blame them. But lay on my coffin a sword; 
for I was a brave soldier in the war of liberation of 
humanity." 

Heine had his full share of love of fame, and cared 
quite as much as his brethren of the genus irritabile 
whether people praised his verses or blamed them. 
And he was very little of a hero. Posterity will certainly 
decorate his tomb with the emblem of the laurel rather 
than with the emblem of the sword. Still, for his con- 
temporaries, for us, for the Europe of the present century, 
he is significant chiefly for the reason which he himself 
in the words just quoted assigns. He is significant 
because he was, if not pre-eminently a brave, yet a 
brilliant, a most effective soldier in the war of liberation 
of humanity. 

To ascertain the master-current in the literature of an 
•epoch, and to distinguish this from all minor currents, is 
one of the critic's highest functions ; in discharging it he 
L 2 



148 HEINRICH HEINE. 

shows how far he possesses the most indispensable quality 
of his office, — justness of spirit. The living writer who 
has done most to make England acquainted with German 
authors, a man of genius, but to whom precisely this one 
quality of justness of spirit is perhaps wanting, — I mean 
Mr. Carlyle, — seems to me in the result of his labours on 
German literature to afford a proof how very necessary 
to the critic this quality is. Mr. Carlyle has spoken 
admirably of Goethe ; but then Goethe stands before 
all men's eyes, the manifest centre of German literature ; 
and from this central source many rivers flow. Which 
of these rivers is the main stream ? which of the courses 
of spirit which we see active in Goethe is the course 
which will most influence the future, and attract and be 
continued by the most powerful of Goethe's successors ? 
— that is the question. Mr. Carlyle attaches, it seems to 
me, far too much importance to the romantic school of 
Germany, — Tieck, Novalis, Jean Paul Richter, — and 
gives to these writers, really gifted as two, at any rate, 
of them are, an undue prominence. These writers, and 
others with aims and a general tendency the same as 
theirs, are not the real inheritors and continuators ol 
Goethe's power ; the current of their activity is not the 
main current of German literature after Goethe. Far 
more in Heine's works flows this main current ; Heine, 
far more than Tieck or Jean Paul Richter, is the con- 
tinuator of that which, in Goethe's varied activity, is the 
most powerful and vital ; on Heine, of all German authors 
who survived Goethe, incomparably the largest portion 
of Goethe's mantle fell. I do not forget that when 
Mr. Carlyle was dealing with German literature, Heine, 



\ 



HEINRICH HEINE. 149 

though he was clearly risen above the horizon, had not 
shone forth with all his strength; I do not forget, too, 
that after ten or twenty years many things may come out 
plain before the critic which before were hard to be 
discerned by him ; and assuredly no one would dream 
of imputing it as a fault to Mr. Carlyle that twenty years 
ago he mistook the central current in German literature, 
overlooked the rising Heine, and attached undue im- 
portance to that romantic school which Heine was to 
destroy ; one may rather note it as a misfortune, sent 
perhaps as a delicate chastisement to a critic, who, — 
man of genius as he is, and no one recognises his genius 
more admiringly than I do, — has, for the functions of 
the critic, a little too much of the self-will and eccentricity 
of a genuine son of Great Britain. 

Heine is noteworthy, because he is the most important 
German successor and continuator of Goethe in Goethe's 
most important line of activity. And which of Goethe's 
lines of activity is this? — His line of activity as "a 
soldier in the war of liberation of humanity." 

Heine himself would hardly have admitted this 
affiliation, though he was far too powerful-minded a 
man to decry, with some of the vulgar German liberals, 
Goethe's genius. " The wind of the Paris Revolution," 
he writes after the three days of 1830, "blew about the 
candles a little in the dark night of Germany, so that the 
red curtains of a German throne or two caught fire ; but 
the old watchmen, who do the police of the German 
kingdoms, are already bringing out the fire-engines, and 
will keep the candles closer snuffed for the future. Poor, 
fast-bound German people, lose not all heart in thy 



150 HEINRICH HEINE. 

bonds ! The fashionable coating of ice melts off from 
my heart, my soul quivers and my eyes burn, and that is 
a disadvantageous state of things for a writer, who should 
control his subject-matter and keep himself beautifully 
objective, as the artistic school would have us, and as 
Goethe has done ; he has come to be eighty years old 
doing this, and minister, and in good condition ; — poor 
German people ! that is thy greatest man ! " 

But hear Goethe himself : " If I were to say what I 
had really been to the Germans in general, and to the 
young German poets in particular, I should say I had 
been their liberator." 

Modern times find themselves with an immense system 
of institutions, established facts, accredited dogmas, 
customs, rules, which have come to them from times not 
modern. In this system their life has to be carried for- 
ward j yet they have a sense that this system is not of 
their own creation, that it by no means corresponds 
exactly with the wants of their actual life, that, for them, 
it is customary, not rational. The awakening of this 
sense is the awakening of the modern spirit. The 
modern spirit is now awake almost everywhere ; the 
sense of want of correspondence between the forms of 
modern Europe and its spirit, between the new wine of 
the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and the old 
bottles of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, or even of 
the sixteenth and seventeenth, almost every one now 
perceives ; it is no longer dangerous to affirm that this 
want of correspondence exists ; people are even be- 
ginning to be shy of denying it. To remove this want 
of correspondence is beginning to be the settled 



HEINRICH HEINE. 151 

endeavour of most persons of good sense. Dissolvents 
of the old European system of dominant ideas and 
facts we must all be, all of us who have any power of 
working ; what we have to study is that we may not be 
acrid dissolvents of it. 

And how did Goethe, that grand dissolvent in an age 
when there were fewer of them than at present, proceed 
in his task of dissolution, of liberation of the modern 
European from the old routine ? He shall tell us himself. 
"Through me the German poets have become aware 
that, as man must live from within outwards, so the 
artist must work from within outwards, seeing that, make 
what contortions he will, he can only bring to light his 
own individuality. I can clearly mark where this in- 
fluence of mine has made itself felt ; there arises out of 
it a kind of poetry of nature, and only in this way is it 
possible to be original." 

My voice shall never be joined to those which decry 
Goethe, and if it is said that the foregoing is a lame and 
impotent conclusion to Goethe's declaration that he had 
been the liberator of the Germans in general, and of the 
young German poets in particular, I say it is not. 
Goethe's profound, imperturbable naturalism is abso- 
lutely fatal to all routine thinking \ he puts the standard, 
once for all, inside every man instead of outside him ; 
when he is told, such a thing must be so, there is im- 
mense authority and custom in favour of its being so, it 
has been held to be so for a thousand years, he answers 
with Olympian politeness, " But is it so ? is it so to me %*} 
Nothing could be more really subversive of the founda- 
tions on which the old European order rested; and it 



152 HEINRICH HEINE. 

may be remarked that no persons are so radically de- 
tached from this order, no persons so thoroughly modern, 
as those who have felt Goethe's influence most deeply. 
If it is said that Goethe professes to have in this -way 
deeply influenced but a few persons, and those persons 
poets, one may answer that he could have taken no 
better way to secure, in the end, the ear of the world ; for 
poetry is simply the most beautiful, impressive, and widely 
effective mode of saying things, and hence its import- 
ance. Nevertheless the process of liberation, as Goethe 
worked it, though sure, is undoubtedly slow ; he came, 
as Heine says, to be eighty years old in thus working it, 
and at the end of that time the old Middle-Age machine 
was still creaking on, the thirty German courts and their 
chamberlains subsisted in all their glory ; Goethe himself 
was a minister, and the visible triumph of the modern 
spirit over prescription and routine seemed as far off as 
ever. It was the year 1830 ; the German sovereigns had ** 
passed the preceding fifteen years in breaking the pro- 
mises of freedom they had made to their subjects when 
they wanted their help in the final struggle with Napo- 
leon. Great events were happening in France; the 
revolution, defeated in 1815, had arisen from its defeat, 
and was wresting from its adversaries the power. Hein- 
rich Heine, a young man of genius, born at Hamburg, 
and with all the culture of Germany, but by race a Jew ; 
with warm sympathies for France, whose revolution had 
given to his race the rights of citizenship, and whose rule 
had been, as is well known, popular in the Rhine pro- 
vinces, where he passed his youth ; with a passionate 
admiration for the great French Emperor, with a pas- 



HEINRICH HEINE. 153 

sionate contempt for the sovereigns who had overthrown 
him, for their agents, and for their policy, — Heinrich 
Heine was in 1830 in no humour for any such gradual 
process of liberation from the old order of things as that 
which Goethe had followed. His counsel was for open 
war. With that terrible modern weapon, the pen, in his 
hand, he passed the remainder of his life in one fierce 
battle. What was that battle ? the reader will ask. It 
was a life and death battle with Philistinism. 

Philistinism ! — we have not the expression in English. 
Perhaps we have not the word because we have so much 
of the thing. At Soli, I imagine, they did not talk of 
solecisms ; and here, at the very head-quarters of Goliath, 
nobody talks of Philistinism. The French have adopted 
the term efiicier (grocer), to designate the sort of being 
whom the Germans designate by the term Philistine ; but 
the French term, — besides that it casts a slur upon a 
respectable class, composed of living and susceptible 
members, while the original Philistines are dead and 
buried long ago, — is really, I think, in itself much less 
apt and expressive than the German term. Efforts have 
been made to obtain in English some term equivalent to 
Philister or efiicier ; Mr. Carlyle has made several such 
efforts : " respectability with its thousand gigs," he says ; 
— well, the occupant of every one of these gigs is, Mr. 
Carlyle means, a Philistine. However, the word resfiect- 
able is far too valuable a word to be thus perverted from 
its proper meaning; if the English are ever to have a 
word for the thing we are speaking of, — and so prodigious 
are the changes which the modern spirit is introducing, 
that even we English shall perhaps one day come to 



154 HEINRICH HEINE. 

want such a word, — I think we had much better take the 
term Philistine itself. 

Philisti7ie must have originally meant, in the mind of 
those who invented the nickname, a strong, dogged, 
unenlightened opponent of the chosen people, of the 
children of the light. The party of change, the would-be 
remodellers of the old traditional European order, the 
invokers of reason against custom, the representatives of 
the modern spirit in every sphere where it is applicable, 
regarded themselves, with the robust self-confidence 
natural to reformers as a chosen people, as children of 
the light. They regarded their adversaries as humdrum 
people, slaves to routine, enemies to light ; stupid and 
oppressive, but at the same time very strong. This 
explains the love which Heine, that Paladin of the 
modern spirit, has for France ; it explains the preference 
which he gives to France over Germany : " the French," 
he says, " are the chosen people of the new religion, its 
first gospels and dogmas have been drawn up in their 
language ; Paris is the new Jerusalem, and the Rhine is 
the Jordan which divides the consecrated land of freedom 
from the land of the Philistines." He means that the 
French, as a people, have shown more accessibility to 
ideas than any other people ; that prescription and 
routine have had less hold upon them than upon any 
other people; that they have shown most readiness to 
move and to alter at the bidding (real or supposed) of 
reason. This explains, too, the detestation which Heine 
had for the English : " I might settle in England," he 
says, in his exile, " if it were not that I should find there 
two things, coal-smoke and Englishmen ; I cannot abide 






HEINRICH HEINE. 155 

either." What he hated in the English was the " acht- 
brittische Beschranktheit," as he calls it, — the genuine — 
British narrowness. In truth, the English, profoundly 
as they have modified the old Middle-Age order, great 
as is the liberty which they have secured for themselves, 
have in all their changes proceeded, to use a familiar 
expression, by the rule of thumb ; what was intolerably 
inconvenient to them they have suppressed, and as they 
have suppressed it, not because it was irrational, but be- 
cause it was practically inconvenient, they have seldom 
in suppressing ' it appealed to reason, but always, if 
possible, to some precedent, or form, or letter, which 
served as a convenient instrument for their purpose, and 
which saved them from the necessity of recurring to 
general principles. They have thus become, in a certain 
sense, of all people the most inaccessible to ideas and 
the most impatient of them ; inaccessible to them, be- 
cause of their want of familiarity with them ; and im- 
patient of them because they have got on so well without 
them, that they despise those who, not having got on as 
well as themselves, still make a fuss for what they them- 
selves have done so well without. But there has certainly 
followed from hence, in this country, somewhat of a 
general depression of pure intelligence : Philistia has. 
come to be thought by us the true Land of Promise, and 
it is anything but that ; the born lover of ideas, the born 
hater of commonplaces, must feel in this country, that 
the sky over his head is of brass and iron. The enthusiast -^ 
for the idea, for reason, values reason, the idea, in and 
for themselves ; he values them, irrespectively of the 
practical conveniences which their triumph may obtain 



156 HEINRICH HEINE. 

for him ; and the man who regards the possession of 
these practical conveniences as something sufficient in 
itself, something which compensates for the absence or 
surrender of the idea, of reason, is, in his eyes, a 
Philistine. This is why Heine so often and so merci- 
lessly attacks the liberals ; much as he hates conservatism 
he hates Philistinism even more, and whoever attacks 
conservatism itself ignobly, not as a child of light, not ' 
in the name of the idea, is a Philistine. Our Cobbett is 
thus for him, much as he disliked our clergy and aris- 
tocracy whom Gobbett attacked, a Philistine with six 
fingers on every hand and on every foot six toes, four- 
and-twenty in number : a Philistine, the staff of whose 
spear is like a weaver's beam. Thus he speaks of him : — 
" While I translate Cobbett's words, the man himself 
comes bodily before my mind's eye, as I saw him at that 
uproarious dinner at the Crown and Anchor Tavern, 
with his scolding red face and his radical laugh, in which 
venomous hate mingles with a mocking exultation at his 
enemies' surely approaching downfall. He is a chained 
cur, who falls with equal fury on every one whom he 
does not know, often bites the best friend of the house 
in his calves, barks incessantly, and just because of this 
incessantness of his barking cannot get listened to, even 
when he barks at a real thief. Therefore, the distin- 
guished thieves who plunder England do not think it 
necessary to throw the growling Cobbett a bone to stop 
his mouth. This makes the dog furiously savage, and 
he shows all his hungry teeth. Poor old Cobbett ! Eng- 
land's dog ! I have no love for thee, for every vulgar 
nature my soul abhors ; but thou touchest me to the 



HEINRICH HEINE. 157 

inmost soul with pity, as I see how thou strainest in vain 
to break loose and to get at those thieves, who make off 
with their booty before thy very eyes, and mock at thy 
fruitless springs and thine impotent howling." 

There is balm in Philistia as well as in Gilead. A 
chosen circle of children of the modern spirit, perfectly 
emancipated from prejudice and commonplace, regarding 
the ideal side of things in all its efforts for change, pas- 
sionately despising half-measures and condescension to 
human folly and obstinacy, — with a bewildered, timid, 
torpid multitude behind, — conducts a country to the 
ministry of Herr von Bismarck. A nation regarding the 
practical side of things in its efforts for change, attacking 
not what is irrational, but what is pressingly inconvenient, 
and attacking this as one body, " moving altogether if 
it move at all," and treating children of light like the 
very harshest of step-mothers, comes to the prosperity 
and liberty of modern England. For all that, however, 
Philistia (let me say it again) is not the true promised 
land, as we English commonly imagine it to be ; and our 
excessive neglect of the idea, and consequent inaptitude 
for it, threatens us, at a moment when the idea is beginning 
to exercise a real power in human society, with serious 
future inconvenience, and, in the meanwhile, cuts us off 
from the sympathy of other nations, which feel its power 
more than we do. 

But, in 1830, Heine very soon found that the fire- 
engines of the German governments were too much for 
his direct efforts at incendiarism. " What demon drove 
me," he cries, " to write my Reisebilder, to edit a news- 
paper, to plague myself with our time and its interests, 



158 HEINRICH HEINE. 

to try and shake the poor German Hodge out of his 
thousand years' sleep in his hole ? What good did I get 
b>y it ? Hodge opened his eyes, only to shut them again 
immediately; he yawned, only to begin snoring again 
the next minute louder than ever ; he stretched his stiff 
ungainly limbs, only to sink down again directly after- 
wards, and lie like a dead man in the old bed of his 
accustomed habits. I must have rest ; but where am 
I to find a resting-place ? In Germany I can no longer 
stay." 

This is Heine's jesting account of his own efforts to 
Touse Germany : now for his pathetic account of them ; 
it is because he unites so much wit with so much pathos 
that he is so effective a writer : — 

" The Emperor Charles the Fifth sate in sore straits, 
in the Tyrol, encompassed by his enemies. All his 
knights and courtiers had forsaken him j not one came 
to his help. I know not if he had at that time the 
cheese face with which Holbein has painted him for us. 
But I am sure that under-lip of his, with its contempt for 
mankind, stuck out even more than it does in his por- 
traits. How could he but contemn the tribe which in 
the sunshine *of his prosperity had fawned on him so 
devotedly, and now, in his dark distress, left him all 
alone ? Then suddenly his door opened, and there came 
in a man in disguise, and, as he threw back his cloak, 
the Kaiser recognised in him his faithful Conrad von 
der Rosen, the court jester. This man brought him 
comfort and counsel, and he was the court j ester ! 

" O German fatherland ! dear German people ! I am 
thy Conrad von der Rosen. The man whose proper 



HEINRICH HEINE. 1 59 

business was to amuse thee, and who in good times should 
have catered only for thy mirth, makes his way into thy 
prison in time of need ; here, under my cloak, I bring 
thee thy sceptre and crown ; dost thou not recognise me, 
my Kaiser? If I cannot free thee, I will at least com- 
fort thee, and thou shalt at least have one with thee who 
will prattle with thee about thy sorest affliction, and 
whisper courage to thee, and love thee, and whose, best 
joke and best blood shall be at thy service. For thou, 
my people, art the true Kaiser, the true lord of the land ; 
thy will is sovereign, and more legitimate far than that 
purple Tel est notre plaisir, which invokes a divine right 
with no better warrant than the anointings of shaven and 
shorn jugglers ; thy will, my people, is the sole rightful 
source of power. Though now thou liest down in thy 
bonds, yet in the end will thy rightful cause prevail ; the 
day of deliverance is at hand, a new time is beginning. 
My Kaiser, the night is over, and out there glows the 
ruddy dawn. 

" ' Conrad von der Rosen, my fool, thou art mistaken ; 
perhaps thou takest a headsman's gleaming axe for the 
sun, and the red of dawn is only blood.' 

" ' No, my Kaiser, it is the sun, though it is rising in 
the west ; these six thousand years it has always risen in 
the east ; it is high time there should come a change.' 

" ' Conrad von der Rosen, my fool, thou hast lost the 
bells out of thy red cap, and it has now such an odd look, 
that red cap of thine ! ' 

" ' Ah, my Kaiser, thy distress has made me shake 
my head so hard and fierce, that the fool's bells have 
dropped off my cap ; the cap is none the worse for that. 



l6o HEINRICH HEINE. 

" ' Conrad von der Rosen, my fool, what is that noise 
of breaking and cracking outside there ? ' 

" ' Hush ! that is the saw and the carpenter's axe, and 
soon the doors of thy prison will be burst open, and thou 
wilt be free, my Kaiser ! ' 

" ' Am I then really Kaiser % Ah, I forgot, it is the 
fool who tells me so ! ' 

" ' Oh, sigh not, my dear master, the air of thy prison 
makes thee so desponding ! when once thou hast got thy 
rights again, thou wilt feel once more the bold imperial 
blood in thy veins, and thou wilt be proud like a Kaiser, 
and violent, and gracious, and unjust, and smiling, and 
ungrateful, as princes are.' 

" ' Conrad von der Rosen, my fool, when I am free, 
what wilt thou do then ? ' 

" ' I will then sew new bells on to my cap.' 
" ' And how shall I recompense thy fidelity ? ' 
" 'Ah, dear master, by not leaving me to die in a ditch !'" 
I wish to mark Heine's place in modern European 
literature, the scope of his activity, and his value. I 
cannot attempt to give here a detailed account of his 
life, or a description of his separate works. In May, 
183 1, he went over his Jordan, the Rhine, and fixed him- 
self in his new Jerusalem, Paris. There, henceforward, 
he lived, going in general to some French watering-place 
in the summer, but making only one or two short visits 
to Germany during the rest of his life. His works, in 
verse and prose, succeeded each other without stopping ; 
a collected edition of them, filling seven closely-printed 
octavo volumes, has been published in America ;* in the 
.* A complete edition has at last appeared in Germany. 



HEINRICH HEINE. 16 I 

collected editions of few people's works is there so little 
to skip. Those who wish for a single good specimen of 
him should read his first important work, the work which 
made his reputation, the Reisebilder, or " Travelling 
Sketches:" prose and verse, wit and seriousness, are 
mingled in it, and the mingling of these is characteristic 
of Heine, and is nowhere to be seen practised more 
naturally and happily than in his Reisebilder. In 1847 
his health, which till then had always been perfectly good, 
gave way. He had a kind of paralytic stroke. His 
malady proved to be a softening of the spinal marrow : 
it was incurable ; it made rapid progress. In May, 1848, 
not a year after his first attack, he went out of doors for 
the last time ; but his disease took more than eight years 
to kill him. For nearly eight years he lay helpless on a 
couch, with the use of his limbs gone, wasted almost to 
the proportions of a child, wasted so that a woman could 
carry him about ; the sight of one eye lost, that of the 
other greatly dimmed, and requiring, that it might be 
exercised, to have the palsied eyelid lifted and held up 
by the finger ; all this, and suffering, besides this, at short 
intervals, paroxysms of nervous agony. I have said he 
was not pre-eminently brave ; but in the astonishing force 
of spirit with which he retained his activity of mind, even 
his gaiety, amid all his suffering, and went on composing 
with undiminished fire to the last, he was truly brave. 
Nothing could clog that aerial lightness. " Pouvez-vous 
sifTler?" his doctor asked him one day, when he was 
almost at his last gasp ; — " siffler," as every one knows, 
has the double meaning of to whistle and to hiss: — 
" Helas ! non," was his whispered answer; " pas meme 

M 



1 62 HEINRICH HEINE. 

une comedie de M. Scribe ! " M. Scribe is, or was, the 
favourite dramatist of the French Philistine. " My nerves," 
he said to some one who asked him about them in 1855, 
the year of the Great Exhibition in Paris, "my nerves 
are of that quite singularly remarkable miserableness of 
nature, that I am convinced they would get at the Exhi- 
bition the grand medal for pain and misery." He read 
all the medical books which treated of his complaint. 
" But," said he to some one who found him thus engaged, 
" what good this reading is to do me I don't know, except 
that it will qualify me to give lectures in heaven on the 
ignorance of doctors on earth about diseases of the spinal 
marrow." What a matter of grim seriousness are our own 
ailments to most of us ! yet with this gaiety Heine treated 
his to the end. That end, so long in coming, came at 
last. Heine died on the 17th of February, 1856, at the 
age of fifty-eight. By his will he forbade that his remains 
should be transported to Germany. He lies buried in 
the cemetery of Montmartre, at Paris. 

His direct political action was null, and this is neither 
to be wondered at nor regretted ; direct political action 
is not the true function of literature, and Heine was a 
born man of letters. Even in his favourite France the 
turn taken by public affairs was not at all what he 
wished, though he read French politics by no means 
as we in England, most of us, read them. He thought 
things were tending there to the triumph of communism ; 
and to a champion of the idea like Heine, what there is 
gross and narrow in communism was very repulsive. " It 
is all of no use," he cried on his death-bed, " the future 
belongs to our enemies, the Communists, and Louis 



HEINRICH HEINE. 1 63 

Napoleon is their John the Baptist." " And yet," — he 
added with all his old love for that remarkable entity, 
so full of attraction for him, so profoundly unknown in 
England, the French people, — " do not believe that God 
lets all this go forward merely as a grand comedy. Even 
though the Communists deny him to-day, he knows 
better than they do, that a time will come when they 
will learn to believe in him." After 1831 his hopes of 
soon upsetting the German Governments had died away, 
and his propagandism took another, a more truly literary, 
character. It took the character of an intrepid applica- 
tion of the modern spirit to literature. To the ideas with 
which the burning questions of modern life filled him, he 
made all his subject matter minister. He touched all 
the great points in the career of the human race, and 
here he but followed the tendency of the wide culture of 
Germany ; but he touched them with a wand which 
brought them all under a light where the modern eye 
cares most to see them, and here he gave a lesson to the 
culture of Germany, — so wide, so impartial, that it is apt 
to become slack and powerless, and to lose itself in its 
materials for want of a strong central idea round which 
to group all its other ideas. So the mystic and romantic 
school of Germany lost itself in the Middle Ages, was 
overpowered by their influence, came to ruin by its vain 
dreams of renewing them. Heine, with a far profounder 
sense of the mystic and romantic charm of the Middle 
Age than Gcerres, or Brentano, or Arnim, Heine the chief 
romantic poet of Germany, is yet also much more than 
a romantic poet ; he is a great modern poet, he is not 
conquered by the Middle Age, he has a talisman by 
M 2 



1 64 HEINRICH HEINE. 

which he can feel, — along with but above the power of 
the fascinating Middle Age itself, — the power of modern 
ideas. 

A French critic of Heine thinks he has said enough 
in saying that Heine proclaimed in German countries, 
with beat of drum, the ideas of 1789, and that at the 
cheerful noise of his drum the ghosts of the Middle 
Age took to flight. But this is rather too French an 
account of the matter. Germany, that vast mine of 
ideas, had no need to import ideas, as such, from any 
foreign country ; and if Heine had carried ideas, as such, 
from France into Germany, he would but have been 
carrying coals to Newcastle. But that for which France, 
far less meditative than Germany, is eminent, is the 
prompt, ardent, and practical application of an idea, 
when she seizes it, in all departments of human activity 
which admit it. And that in which Germany most fails, 
and by falling in which she appears so helpless and 
impotent, is just the practical application of her innu- 
merable ideas. "When Candide," says Heine himself, 
" came to Eldorado," he saw in the streets a number of 
boys who were playing with gold-nuggets instead of 
marbles. This degree of luxury made him imagine that 
they must be the king's children, and he was not a little 
astonished when he found that in Eldorado gold-nuggets 
are of no more value than marbles are with us, and that 
the schoolboys play with them. A similar thing happened 
to a friend of mine, a foreigner, when he came to 
Germany and first read German books. He was per- 
fectly astounded at the wealth of ideas which he found 
in them ; but he soon remarked that ideas in Germany 



HEINRICH HEINE. I 65 

are as plentiful as gold-nuggets in Eldorado, and that 
those writers whom he had taken for intellectual princes, 
were in reality only common school-boys." Heine was, 
as he calls himself, a " Child of the French Revolu- 
tion," an " Initiator," because he vigorously assured the 
Germans that ideas were not counters or marbles, to be 
played with for their own sake ; because he exhibited in 
literature modern ideas applied with the utmost freedom, 
clearness, and originality. And therefore he declared 
that the great task of his life had been the endeavour to 
establish a cordial relation between France and Germany. 
It is because he thus operates a junction between the 
French spirit, and German ideas and German culture, 
that he founds something new, opens a fresh period, and 
deserves the attention of criticism far more than the 
German poets his contemporaries, who merely continue 
an old period till it expires. It may be predicted that 
in the literature of other countries, too, the French spirit 
is destined to make its influence felt, — as an element, in 
alliance with the native spirit, of novelty and movement, — 
as it has made its influence felt in German literature ; 
fifty years hence a critic will be demonstrating to our 
grandchildren how this phenomenon has come to pass. 

We in England, in our great burst of literature during 
the first thirty years of the present century, had no mani- 
festation of the modern spirit, as this spirit manifests 
itself in Goethe's works or Heine's. And the reason is 
not far to seek. We had neither the German wealth of 
ideas, nor the French enthusiasm for applying ideas. 
There reigned in the mass of the nation that inveterate 
inaccessibility to ideas, that Philistinism, — to use the 



1 66 HEINRICH HEINE. 

German nickname, — which reacts even on the individual 
genius that is exempt from it. In our greatest literary- 
epoch, that of the Elizabethan age, English society at 
large was accessible to ideas, was permeated by them, 
was vivified by them, to a degree which has never been 
reached in England since. Hence the unique greatness 
in English literature of Shakspeare and his contempo- 
raries; they were powerfully upheld by the intellectual 
life of their nation j they applied freely in literature the 
then modern ideas, — the ideas of the Renaissance and 
the Reformation. A few years afterwards the great 
English middle class, the kernel of the nation, the class 
whose intelligent sympathy had upheld a Shakspeare, 
entered the prison of Puritanism, and had the key turned 
on its spirit there for two hundred years. He enlargeth 
a nation, says Job, and straiteneth it again. In the literary 
movement of the beginning of the nineteenth century 
the signal attempt to apply freely the modern spirit was 
made in England by two members of the aristocratic 
class, Byron and Shelley. Aristocracies are, as such, 
naturally impenetrable by ideas; but their individual 
members have a high courage and a turn for breaking 
bounds ; and a man of genius, who is the bora child of 
the idea, happening to be born in the aristocratic ranks, 
chafes against the obstacles which prevent him from 
freely developing it. But Byron and Shelley did not 
succeed in their attempt freely to apply the modern 
spirit in English literature; they could not succeed in 
it ; the resistance to baffle them, the want of intelligent 
sympathy to guide and uphold them, were too great. 
Their literary creation, compared with the literary crea- 



HEINRICH HEINE. 167 

tion of Shakspeare and Spenser, compared with the 
literary creation of Goethe and Heine, is a failure. The 
best literary creation of that time in England proceeded 
from men who did not make the same bold attempt as 
Byron and Shelley. What, in fact, was the career of the 
chief English men of letters, their contemporaries ? The 
greatest of them, Wordsworth, retired (in Middle-Age 
phrase) into a monastery. I mean, he plunged himself 
in the inward life, he voluntarily cut himself off from the 
modern spirit. Coleridge took to opium. Scott became 
the historiographer royal of feudalism. Keats passion- 
ately gave himself up to a sensuous genius, to his faculty 
for interpreting nature ; and he died of consumption at 
twenty-five. Wordsworth, Scott, and Keats have left 
admirable works ; far more solid and complete works 
than those which Byron and Shelley have left. But their 
works have this defect ; — they do not belong to that which 
is the main current of the literature of modern epochs, 
they do not apply modern ideas to life ; they constitute, 
therefore, minor currents, and all other literary work of 
our day, however popular, which has the same defect, 
also constitutes but a minor current. Byron and Shelley 
will be long remembered, long after the inadequacy of 
their actual work is clearly recognised, for their passionate, 
their Titanic effort to flow in the main stream of modern 
literature ; their names will be greater than their writings ; 
stat magni nominis umbra. m 

Heine's literary good fortune was superior to that 
of Byron and Shelley. His theatre of operations was 
Germany, whose Philistinism does not consist in her 
want of ideas, or in her inaccessibility to ideas, for she 



1 68 HEINRICH HEINE. 

teems with them and loves them, but, as I have said, in 
her feeble and hesitating application of modern ideas to 
life. Heine's intense modernism, his absolute freedom, 
his utter rejection of stock classicism and stock romanti- 
cism, his bringing all things under the point of view of the 
nineteenth century, were understood and laid to heart 
by Germany, through virtue of her immense, tolerant 
intellectualism, much as there was in all Heine said 
to affront and wound Germany. The wit and ardent 
modern spirit of France Heine joined to the culture, the 
sentiment, the thought of Germany. This is what makes 
him so remarkable; his wonderful clearness, lightness, 
and freedom, united with such power of feeling and 
width of range. Is there anywhere keener wit than in 
his story of the French abbe who was his tutor, and who 
wanted to get from him that la religion is French for der 
Glaube : " Six times did he ask me the question : ' Henry, 
what is der Glaube in French ?' and six times, and each 
time with a greater burst of tears, did I answer him — ' It 
is le credit' And at the seventh time, his face purple 
with rage, the infuriated questioner screamed out : ' It is 
la religion;'' and a rain of cuffs descended upon me, and 
all the other boys burst out laughing. Since that day I 
have never been able to hear la religion mentioned, with- 
out feeling a tremor run through my back, and my cheeks 
grow red with shame." Or in that comment on the fate 
of Professor Saalfeld, who had been addicted to writing 
furious pamphlets against Napoleon, and who was a 
professor at Gottingen, a great seat, according to Heine, 
of pedantry and Philistinism : "It is curious," says 
Heine, ' the three greatest adversaries of Napoleon have 



HEINRICH HEINE. 1 69 

all of them ended miserably. Castlereagh cut his own 
throat ; Louis the Eighteenth rotted upon his throne ; 
and Professor Saalfeld is still a professor at Gottingen." 
It is impossible to go beyond that. 

What wit, again, in that saying which every one has 
heard : " The Englishman loves liberty like his lawful 
wife, the Frenchman loves her like his mistress, the 
German loves her like his old grandmother." But the 
turn Heine gives to this incomparable saying is not so 
well known ; and it is by that turn he shows himself the 
born poet he is, — full of delicacy and tenderness, of 
inexhaustible resource, infinitely new and striking : — 

" And yet, after all, no one can ever tell how things 
may turn out. The grumpy Englishman, in an ill-temper 
with his wife, is capable of some day putting a rope round 
her neck, and taking her to be sold at Smithfield. The 
inconstant Frenchman may become unfaithful to his 
adored mistress, and be seen fluttering about the Palais 
Royal after another. But the German will never quite 
abandon his old grand?nother ; he will always keep for her 
a nook by the chimney-corner, where she can tell her 
fairy stories to the listening children." 

Is it possible to touch more delicately and happily both 
the weakness and the strength of Germany \ — pedantic, 
simple, enslaved, free, ridiculous, admirable Germany? 

And Heine's verse, — his Lieder? Oh, the comfort, 
after dealing with French people of genius, irresistibly 
impelled to try and express themselves in verse, launch- 
ing out into a deep which destiny has sown with so many 
rocks for them, — the comfort of coming to a man of 
genius, who finds in verse his freest and most perfect 



170 HEINRICH HEINE. 

expression, whose voyage over the deep of poetry destiny 
makes smooth ! After the rhythm, to us, at any rate, with 
the German paste in our composition, so deeply unsatis- 
fying, of— 

" Ah ! que me elites- vous, et que vous dit mon ame ? 
Que dit le ciel a l'aube et la flamme a la flamme ? " 

what a blessing to arrive at rhythms like — 

" Take, oh, take those lips away, 
That so sweetly were forsworn — " 

or — 

" Siehst sehr sterbeblasslich aus, 
Doch getrost ! du bist zu Haus — " 

in which one's soul can take pleasure ! The magic of 
Heine's poetical form is incomparable ; he chiefly uses a 
form of old German popular poetry, a ballad-form which 
has more rapidity and grace than any ballad-form of ours ; 
he employs this form with the most exquisite lightness 
and ease, and yet it has at the same time the inborn 
fulness, pathos, and x>ld-world charm of all true forms of 
popular poetry. Thus in Heine's poetry, too, one per- 
petually blends the impression of French modernism and 
clearness, with that of German sentiment and fulness ; 
and to give this blended impression is, as I have said, 
Heine's great characteristic. To feel it, one must read 
him ; he gives it in his form as well as in his contents, 
and by translation I can only reproduce it so far as his 
contents give it. But even the contents of many of his 
poems are capable of giving a certain sense of it. Here, 
for instance, is a poem in which he makes his profession 
of faith to an innocent beautiful soul, a sort of Gretchen, 



HEINRICH HEINE. 171 

the child of some simple mining people having their hut 
among the pines at the foot of the Hartz Mountains, who 
reproaches him with not holding the old articles of the 
Christian creed : — 

" Ah, my child, while I was yet a little boy, while I yet 
sate upon my mother's knee, I believed in God the Father, 
who rules up there in Heaven, good and great ; 

"Who created the beautiful earth, and the beautiful 
men and women thereon ; who ordained for sun, moon, 
and stars their courses. 

" When I got bigger, my child, I comprehended yet a 
great deal more than this, and comprehended, and grew 
intelligent ; and I believe on the Son also ; 

"On the beloved Son, who loved us, and revealed 
love to us ; and for his reward, as always happens, was 
crucified by the people. 

" Now, when I am grown up, have read much, have 
travelled much, my heart swells within me, and with my 
whole heart I believe on the Holy Ghost. 

" The greatest miracles were of his working, and still 
greater miracles doth he even now work ; he burst in 
sunder the oppressor's stronghold, and he burst in sunder 
the bondsman's yoke. 

" He heals old death-wounds, and renews the old right ; 
all mankind are one race of noble equals before him. 

" He chases away the evil clouds and the dark cobwebs 
of the brain, which have spoilt love and joy for us, which 
day and night have loured on us. 

"A thousand knights, well harnessed, has the Holy 
Ghost chosen out to fulfil his will, and he has put courage 
into their souls. 



172 HEINRICH HEINE. 

" Their good swords flash, their bright banners wave ; 
what, thou wouldst give much, my child, to look upon 
such gallant knights ? 

" Well, on me, my child, look ! kiss me, and look 
boldly upon me ! one of those knights of the Holy Ghost 
am I." 

One has only to turn over the pages of his Romancero, 
— a collection of poems written in the first years of his 
illness, with his whole power and charm still in them, 
and not, like his latest poems of all, painfully touched 
by the air of his Matrazze?i-gruft, his " mattress-grave," — 
to see Heine's width of range ; the most varied figures 
succeed one another, --Rhampsinitus, Edith with the Swan 
Neck, Charles the First, Marie Antoinette, King David, 
a heroine of Mabille, Melisanda of Tripoli, Richard Cceur 
de Lion, Pedro the Cruel, Firdusi, Cortes, Dr. Dollinger; 
— but never does Heine attempt to be hiibsch objectiv, 
"beautifully objective," to become in spirit an old 
Egyptian, or an old Hebrew, or a Middle-Age knight, or 
a Spanish adventurer, or an English royalist ; he always 
remains Heinrich Heine, a son of the nineteenth century. 
To give a notion of his tone I will quote a few stanzas at 
the end of the Spanish Atridce, in which he describes, in 
the character of a visitor at the court of Henry of Trans- 
tamare at Segovia, Henry's treatment of the children of 
his brother, Pedro the Cruel. Don Diego Albuquerque, 
his neighbour, strolls after dinner through the castle 
with him : — 

" In the cloister-passage, which leads to the kennels 
where are kept the king's hounds, that with their growling 
and yelping let you know a long way off where they are, 



HEINRICH HEINE. 173 

" There I saw, built into the wall, and with a strong 
iron grating for its outer face, a cell like a cage. 

" Two human figures sate therein, two young boys ; 
chained by the leg, they crouched in the dirty straw. 

" Hardly twelve years old seemed the one, the other 
not much older ; their faces fair and noble, but pale and 
wan with sickness. 

" They were all in rags, almost naked ; and their lean 
bodies showed wounds, the marks of ill-usage ; both of 
them shivered with fever. 

" They looked up at me out of the depth of their 
misery; 'Who,' I cried in horror to Don Diego, 'are 
these pictures of wretchedness?' 

" Don Diego seemed embarrassed ; he looked round 
to see that no one was listening ■ then he gave a deep 
sigh ; and at last, putting on the easy tone of a man 
of the world, he said : 

" ' These are a pair of king's sons, who were early left 
orphans ; the name of their father was King Pedro, the 
name of their mother, Maria de Padilla. 

" ' After the great battle of Navarette, when Henry of 
Transtamare had relieved his brother, King Pedro, of 
the troublesome burden of the crown, 

" ' And likewise of that still more troublesome burden, 
which is called life, then Don Henry's victorious magna- 
nimity had to deal with his brother's children. 

" ' He has adopted them, as an uncle should ; and he 
has given them free quarters in his own castle. . 

"'The room which he has assigned to them is cer- 
tainly rather small, but then it is cool in summer, and 
not intolerably cold in winter. 



174 HEINRICH HEINE. 

'" Their fare is rye-bread, which tastes as sweet as if 
the goddess Ceres had baked it express for her beloved 
Proserpine. 

" ' Not unfrequently, too, he sends a scullion to them 
with garbanzos, and then the young gentlemen know that 
it is Sunday in Spain. 

" ' But it is not Sunday every day, and garbanzos do 
not come every day ; and the master of the hounds gives 
them the treat of his whip. 

" ' For the master of the hounds, who has under his 
superintendence the kennels and the pack, and the 
nephews' cage also, 

" * Is the unfortunate husband of that lemon-faced 
woman with the white ruff, whom we remarked to-day at 
dinner. 

"'And she scolds so sharp, that often her husband 
snatches his whip, and rushes down here, and gives it to 
the dogs and to the poor little boys. 

" ' But his majesty has expressed his disapproval of 
such proceedings, and has given orders that for the future 
his nephews are to be treated differently from the dogs. 

" ' He has determined no longer to entrust the disci- 
plining of his nephews to a mercenary stranger, but to 
carry it out with his own hands.' 

" Don Diego stopped abruptly ; for the seneschal of 
the castle joined us, and politely expressed his hope 
that we had dined to our satisfaction." 

Observe how the irony of the whole of that, finishing 
with the grim inuendo of the last stanza but one, is at 
once truly masterly and truly modern. 

No account of Heine is complete which does not notice 



HEINRICH HEINE. 1 75 

the Jewish element in him. His race he treated with 
the same freedom with which he treated everything else, 
but he derived a great force from it, and no one knew 
this better than he himself. He has excellently pointed 
out how in the sixteenth century there was a double 
renaissance, — a Hellenic renaissance and a Hebrew re- 
naissance, — and how both have been great powers ever 
since. He himself had in him both the spirit of Greece 
and the spirit of Judaea ; both these spirits reach the 
infinite, which is the true goal of all poetry and all art, — 
the Greek spirit by beauty, the Hebrew spirit by sub- 
limity. By his perfection of literary form, by his love 
of clearness, by his love of beauty, Heine is Greek ; by 
his intensity, by his untamableness, by his " longing which 
cannot be uttered," he is Hebrew. Yet what Hebrew 
ever treated the things of the Hebrews like this ? — 

" There lives at Hamburg, in a one-roomed lodging 
in the Baker's Broad Walk, a man whose name is Moses 
Lump ; all the week he goes about in wind and rain, 
with his pack on his back, to earn his few shillings ; but 
when on Friday evening he comes home, he finds the 
candlestick with seven candles lighted, and the table 
covered with a fair white cloth, and he puts away from 
him his pack and his cares, and he sits down to table 
with his squinting wife and yet more squinting daughter, 
and eats fish with them, fish which has been dressed in 
beautiful white garlic sauce, sings therewith the grandest 
psalms of King David, rejoices with his whole heart over 
the deliverance of the children of Israel out of Egypt, 
rejoices, too, that all the wicked ones who have done 
the children of Israel hurt, have ended by taking them- 



176 HEINRICH HEINE. 

selves off; that King Pharaoh, Nebuchadnezzar, Haman, 
Antiochus, Titus, and all such people, are well dead, 
while he, Moses Lump, is yet alive, and eating fish with 
wife and daughter ; and I can tell you, Doctor, the 
fish is delicate and the man is happy, he has no call to 
torment himself about culture, he sits contented in his 
religion and in his green bed-gown, like Diogenes in his 
tub, he contemplates with satisfaction his candles, which 
he on no account will snuff for himself; and I can tell 
you, if the candles burn a little dim, and the snuffers- 
woman, whose business it is to snuff them, is not at 
hand, and Rothschild the Great were at that moment 
to come in, with all his brokers, bill discounters, agents, 
and chief clerks, with whom he conquers the world, 
and Rothschild were to say : ' Moses Lump, ask of me 
what favour you will, and it shall be granted you;' — 
Doctor, I am convinced, Moses Lump would quietly 
answer: 'Snuff me those candles!' and Rothschild the 
Great would exclaim with admiration : ' If I were not 
Rothschild, I would be Moses Lump.'" 

There Heine shows us his own people by its comic 
side ; in the poem of the Princess Sabbath he shows it 
to us by a more serious side. The Princess Sabbath, 
" the tranquil Princess, pearl and flower of all beauty, 
fair as the Queen of Sheba, Solomon's bosom friend, that 
blue stocking from Ethiopia who wanted to shine by her 
esprit, and with her wise riddles made herself in the long 
run a bore" (with Heine the sarcastic turn is never far 
off), this princess has for her betrothed a prince whom 
sorcery has transformed into an animal of lower race, 
the Prince Israel. 



HEINRICH HEINE. 1 77 

" A dog with the desires of a dog, he wallows -all the 
week long in the filth and refuse of life, amidst the jeers 
of the boys in the street. 

" But every Friday evening, at the twilight hour, sud- 
denly the magic passes off, and the dog becomes once 
more a human being. 

" A man with the feelings of a man, with head and 
heart raised aloft, in festal garb, in almost clean garb, he 
enters the halls of his Father. 

" Hail, beloved halls of my royal Father ! Ye tents of 
Jacob, I kiss with my lips your holy door-posts ! " 

Still more he shows us this serious side in his beautiful 
poem on Jehuda ben Halevy, a poet belonging to " the 
great golden age of the Arabian, Old-Spanish, Jewish 
school of poets," a contemporary of the troubadours : — 

"He, too, — the hero whom we sing, — Jehu da ben Halevy, 
too, had his lady-love ; but she was of a special sort. 

" She was no Laura, whose eyes, mortal stars, in the 
cathedral on Good Friday kindled that world-renowned 
flame. 

" She was no chatelaine, who in the blooming glory of 
her youth presided at tourneys, and awarded the victor's 
crown. 

"No casuistess in the Gay Science was she, no lady 
doctrinaire, who delivered her oracles in the judgment- 
chamber of a Court of Love. 

"She, whom the Rabbi loved, was a woe-begone poor 
darling, a mourning picture of desolation . . . and her 
name was Jerusalem." 

Jehuda ben Halevy, like the Crusaders, makes his 
pilgrimage to Jerusalem ; and there, amid the ruins, sings 

N 



178 HEINRICH HEINE. 

a song of Sion which has become famous among his 
people : — 

" That lay of pearled tears is the wide-famed Lament, 
which is sung in all the scattered tents of Jacob through- 
out the world, 

" On the ninth day of the month which is called Ab, 
on the anniversary of Jerusalem's destruction by Titus 
Vespasianus. 

"Yes, that is the song of Sion, which Jehuda ben 
Halevy sang with his dying breath amid the holy ruins 
of Jerusalem. 

" Barefoot, and in penitential weeds, he sate there 
upon the fragment of a fallen column ; down to his breast 
fell, 

u Like a grey forest, his hair ; and cast a weird shadow 
on the face which looked out through it, — his troubled 
pale face, with the spiritual eyes. 

" So he sate and sang, like unto a seer out of the fore- 
time to look upon ; Jeremiah, the Ancient, seemed to 
have risen out of his grave. 

" But a bold Saracen came riding that way, aloft on 
his barb, lolling in his saddle, and brandishing a naked 
javelin ; 

"Into the breast of the poor singer he plunged his 
deadly shaft, and shot away like a winged shadow. 

"Quietly flowed the Rabbi's life-blood, quietly he 
sang his song to an end ; and his last dying sigh was 
Jerusalem !" 

But, most of all, Heine shows us this side in a strange 
poem describing a public dispute, before King Pedro and 
his court, between a Jewish and a Christian champion, on 



HEINRICH HEINE. 179 

the merits of their respective faiths. In the strain of the 
Jew all the fierceness of the old Hebrew genius, all its' 
rigid defiant Monotheism, appear : — 

" Our God has not died like a poor innocent lamb 
for mankind; he is no gushing philanthropist, no de- 
claimer. 

" Our God is not love ; caressing is not his line ; but 
he is a God of thunder, and he is a God of revenge. 

"The lightnings of his wrath strike inexorably every 
sinner, and the sins of the fathers are often visited upon 
their remote posterity. 

" Our God, he is alive, and in his hall of heaven he 
goes on existing away, throughout all the eternities. 

" Our God, too, is a God in robust health, no myth, 
pale and thin as sacrificial wafers, or as shadows by 
Cocytus. 

" Our God is strong. In his hand he upholds sun, 
moon, and stars ; thrones break, nations reel to and fro, 
when he knits his forehead. 

" Our God loves music, the voice of the harp and the 
song of feasting ; but the sound of church-bells he hates, 
as he hates the grunting of pigs." 

Nor must Heine's sweetest note be unheard, — his 
plaintive note, his note of melancholy. Here is a strain 
which came from him as he lay, in the winter night, on 
his " mattress-grave" at Paris, and let his thoughts wander 
home to Germany, " the great child, entertaining herself 
with her Christmas-tree." " Thou tookest," — he cries to 
the German exile, — 

" Thou tookest thy flight towards sunshine and happi- 
ness ; naked and poor returnest thou back. German 

N 2 



l8o HEINRICH HEINE. 

truth, German shirts, — one gets them worn to tatters in 
foreign parts. 

" Deadly pale are thy looks, but take comfort, thou 
art at home; one lies warm in German earth, warm as 
by the old pleasant fireside. 

" Many a one, alas ! became crippled, and could get 
home no more : longingly he stretches out his arms ; 
God have mercy upon him !" 

God have mercy upon him ! for what remain of the 
days of the years of his life are few and evil. " Can it 
be that I still actually exist ? My body is so shrunk that 
there is hardly anything of me left but my voice, and my 
bed makes me think of the melodious grave of the 
enchanter Merlin, which is in the forest of Broceliand in 
Brittany, under high oaks whose tops shine like green 
flames to heaven. Ah, I envy thee those trees, brother 
Merlin, and their fresh waving ! for over my mattress- 
grave here in Paris no green leaves rustle ; and early and 
late I hear nothing but the rattle of carriages, hammering, 
scolding, and the jingle of the piano. A grave without 
rest, death without the privileges of the departed, who 
have no longer any need to spend money, or to write 
letters, or to compose books. What a melancholy 
situation !" 

He died, and has left a blemished name; with his 
crying faults, — his intemperate susceptibility, his unscru- 
pulousness in passion, his inconceivable attacks on his 
enemies, his still more inconceivable attacks on his 
friends, his want of generosity, his sensuality, his inces- 
sant mocking, — how could it be otherwise? Not only 
was he not one of Mr. Carlyle's "respectable" people, 



HEINRICH HEINE. l8l 

he was profoundly ^respectable ; and not even the 
merit of not being a Philistine can make up for a man's 
being that. To his intellectual deliverance there was an 
addition of something else wanting, and that something 
else was something immense ; the old-fashioned, labo- 
rious, eternally needful moral deliverance. Goethe says 
that he was deficient in love ; to me his weakness seems 
to be not so much a deficiency in love as a deficiency in 
self-respect, in true dignity of character. But on this 
negative side of one's criticism of a man of great genius, 
I for my part, when I have once clearly marked that this 
negative side is and must be there, have no pleasure in 
dwelling. I prefer to say of Heine something positive. 
He is not an adequate interpreter of the modern world. 
He is only a brilliant soldier in the war of liberation of 
humanity. But, such as he is, he is (and posterity too, I 
am quite sure, will say this), in the European poetry 
of that quarter of a century which follows the death of 
Goethe, incomparably the most important figure. 

What a spendthrift, one is tempted to cry, is Nature ! 
With what prodigality, in the march of generations, she 
employs human power, content to gather almost always 
little result from it, sometimes none ! Look at Byron, 
that Byron whom the present generation of Englishmen 
are forgetting; Byron, the greatest natural force, the 
greatest elementary power, I cannot but think, which has 
appeared in our literature since Shakspeare. And what 
became of this wonderful production of nature? He 
shattered himself, he inevitably shattered himself to 
pieces, against the huge, black, cloud-topped, inter- 
minable precipice of British Philistinism. But Byron, it 



1 82 HEINRICH HEINE. 

may be said, was eminent only by his genius, only by his 
inborn force and fire ; he had not the intellectual equip- 
ment of a supreme modern poet ; except for his genius 
he was an ordinary nineteenth-century English gentle- 
man, with little culture and with no ideas. Well, then, 
look at Heine. Heine had all the culture of Germany ; 
in his head fermented all the ideas of modern Europe. 
And what have we got from Heine? A half-result, for 
want of moral balance, and of nobleness of soul and 
character. That is what I say ; there is so much power, 
so many seem able to run well, so many give promise 
of running well; so few reach the goal, so few are 
chosen. Many are called, few chosen. 



[ i8 3 ] 



PAGAN AND MEDIEVAL RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 

I read the other day in the Dublin Review: — "We 
Catholics are apt to be cowed and scared by the lordly 
oppression of public opinion, and not to bear ourselves 
as men in the face of the anti-Catholic society of Eng- 
land. It is good to have an habitual consciousness 
that the public opinion of Catholic Europe looks upon 
Protestant England with a mixture of impatience and 
compassion, which more than balances the arrogance 
of the English people towards the Catholic Church in 
these countries." 

The Holy Catholic Church, Apostolic and Roman, can 
take very good care of herself, and I am not going to 
defend her against the scorns of Exeter Hall. Catholicism 
is not a great visible force in this country, and the mass 
of mankind will always treat lightly even things the most 
venerable, if they do not present themselves as visible 
forces before its eyes. In Catholic countries, as the 
Dublin Review itself says with triumph, they make very 
little account of the greatness of Exeter Hall. The 
majority has eyes only for the things of the majority, and 
in England the immense majority is Protestant. And 
yet, in spite of all the shocks which the feeling of a 
good Catholic, like the writer in the Dublin Review, 
has in this Protestant country inevitably to undergo, in 



184 PAGAN AND MEDIEVAL 

spite of the contemptuous insensibility to the grandeur 
of Rome which he finds so general and so hard to bear, 
how much has he to console him, how many acts of 
homage to the greatness of his religion may he see if he 
has his eyes open ! I will tell him of one of them. Let 
him go in London to that delightful spot, that Happy 
Island in Bloomsbury, the reading-room of the British 
Museum. Let him visit its sacred quarter, the region 
where its theological books are placed. I am almost 
afraid to say what he will find there, for fear Mr. Spur- 
geon, like a second Caliph Omar, should give the library 
to the flames. He will find an immense Catholic work, 
the collection of the Abbe Migne, lording it over that 
whole region, reducing to insignificance the feeble Pro- 
testant forces which hang upon its skirts. Protestantism 
is duly represented, indeed : the librarian knows his 
business too well to suffer it to be otherwise; all the 
varieties of Protestantism are there j there is the Library 
of Anglo- Catholic Theology, learned, decorous, exem- 
plary, but a little uninteresting; there are the works of 
Calvin, rigid, militant, menacing ; there are the works of 
Dr. Chalmers, the Scotch thistle valiantly doing duty as 
the rose of Sharon, but keeping something very Scotch 
about it all the time ; there are the works of Dr. Chan- 
ning, the last word of religious philosophy in a land 
where every one has some culture and where superiorities 
are discountenanced, — the flower of moral and intelligent 
mediocrity. But how are all these divided against one 
another, and how, though they were all united, are they 
dwarfed by the Catholic Leviathan, their neighbour ! 
Majestic in its blue and gold unity, this fills shelf after 



RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 1 85 

shelf and compartment after compartment, its right 
mounting up into heaven among the white folios of the 
Acta Sanctorum, its left plunging down into hell among 
the yellow octavos of the Law Digest. Everything is 
there, in that immense Patrologice Cursus Completus, in 
that Encyclopedic Theologique, that Nouvelle Encyclopedic 
Theologique, that Troisieme Encyclopedie Theologique ; 
religion, philosophy, history, biography, arts, sciences, 
bibliography, gossip. The work embraces the whole 
range of human interests ; like one of the great Middle- 
Age Cathedrals, it is in itself a study for a life. Like 
the net in Scripture, it drags everything to land, bad and 
good, lay and ecclesiastical, sacred and profane, so that 
it be but matter of human concern. Wide-embracing as 
the power whose product it is ! a power, for history at 
any rate, eminently the Church ; not, perhaps, the Church 
of the future, but indisputably the Church of the past, 
and, in the past, the Church of the multitude. 

This is why the man of imagination — nay, and the 
philosopher too, in spite of her propensity to burn him — 
will always have a weakness for the Catholic Church ; 
because of the rich treasures of human life which have 
been stored within her pale. The mention of other 
religious bodies, or of their leaders, at once calls up in 
our mind the thought of men of a definite type as their 
adherents ; the mention of Catholicism suggests no such 
special following. Anglicanism suggests the English epis- 
copate; Calvin's name suggests Dr. Candlish; Chalmers's, 
the Duke of Argyll; Channing's, Boston society; but 
Catholicism suggests, —what shall I say? — all the pell-mell 
of the men and women of Shakspeare's plays. This 



1 86 PAGAN AND MEDIEVAL 

abundance the Abbe Migne's collection faithfully reflects. 
People talk of this or that work which they would choose, 
if they were to pass their life with only one ; for ray part 
I think I would choose the Abbe Migne's collection. 
Quicquid agunt homines, — everything, as I have said, is 
there. Do not seek in it splendour of form, perfection 
of editing ; its paper is common, its type ugly, its editing 
indifferent, its printing careless. The greatest and most 
baffling crowd of misprints I ever met with in my life 
occurs in a very important page of the introduction to 
the Didionnaire des Apocryphes. But this is just what 
you have in the world, — quantity rather than quality. 
Do not seek in it impartiality, the critical spirit; in 
reading it you must do the criticism for yourself ; it loves 
criticism as little as the world loves it. Like the world, 
it chooses to have things all its own way, to abuse its 
adversary, to back its own notion through thick and thin, 
to put forward all the pros for its own notion, to suppress 
all the contras ; it does just all that the world does, 
and all that the critical shrinks from. Open the Dic- 
tionnaire des Erreurs Sociales : " The religious persecu- 
tions of Henry the Eighth's and Edward the Sixth's 
time abated a little in the reign of Mary, to break out 
again with new fury in the reign of Elizabeth." There is 
a summary of the history of religious persecution under 
the Tudors ! But how unreasonable to reproach the 
Abbe Migne's work with wanting a criticism, which, by 
the very nature of things, it cannot have, and not rather 
to be grateful to it for its abundance, its variety, its 
infinite suggestiveness, its happy adoption, in many a 
delicate circumstance, of the urbane tone and temper 



RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 1 87 

of the man of the world, instead of the acrid tone and 
temper of the fanatic ! 

Still, in spite of their fascinations, the contents of this 
collection sometimes rouse the critical spirit within one. 
It happened that lately, after I had been thinking much 
of Marcus Aurelius and his times, I took down the Dic- 
tionnaire des Origines du Christianisme, to see what it 
had to say about paganism and pagans. I found much 
what I expected. I read the article, Revelation Evange- 
lique, sa Necessity There I found what a sink of iniquity 
was the whole pagan world ; how one Roman fed his 
oysters on his slaves, how another put a slave to death 
that a curious friend might see what dying was like ; 
how Galen's mother tore and bit her waiting-women 
when she was in a passion with them. I found this 
account of the religion of paganism : " Paganism invented 
a mob of divinities with the most hateful character, and 
attributed to them the most monstrous and abominable 
crimes. It personified in them drunkenness, incest, kid- 
napping, adultery, sensuality, knavery, cruelty, and rage." 
And I found that from this religion there followed such 
practice as was to be expected : " What must naturally 
have been the state of morals under the influence of such 
a religion, which penetrated with its own spirit the public 
life, the family life, and the individual life of antiquity?" 

The colours in this picture are laid on very thick, and 
I for my part cannot believe that any human societies, 
with a religion and practice such as those just described, 
could ever have endured as the societies of Greece and 
Rome endured, still less have done what the societies 
of Greece and Rome did. We are not brought far by 



1 88 PAGAN AND MEDIEVAL 

descriptions of the vices of great cities, or even of indi- 
viduals driven mad by unbounded means of self-indul- 
gence. Feudal and aristocratic life in Christendom has 
produced horrors of selfishness and cruelty not surpassed 
by the grandee of pagan Rome; and then, again, in 
antiquity there is Marcus Aurelius's mother to set against 
Galen's. Eminent examples of vice and virtue in indivi- 
duals prove little as to the state of societies. What, 
under the first emperors, was the condition of the 
Roman poor upon the Aventine compared with that of 
our poor in Spitalfields and Bethnal Green? What, 
in comfort, morals, and happiness, were the rural popu- 
lation of the Sabine country under Augustus's rule, com- 
pared with the rural population of Hertfordshire and 
Buckinghamshire under the rule of Queen Victoria ? 

But these great questions are not now for me. Without 
trying to answer them, I ask myself, when I read such 
declamation as the foregoing, if I can find anything that 
will give me a near, distinct sense of the real difference in 
spirit and sentiment between paganism and Christianity, 
and of the natural effect of this difference upon people 
in general. I take a representative religious poem of 
paganism, — of the paganism which all the world has in 
its mind when it speaks of paganism. To be a repre- 
sentative poem, it must be one for popular use, one that 
the multitude listens to. Such a religious poem may 
be found at the end of one of the best and happiest 
of Theocritus's idylls, the fifteenth. In order that the 
reader may the better go along with me in the line of 
thought I am following, I will translate it ; and, that he 
may see the medium in which religious poetry of this 



RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 1 89 

sort is found existing, the society out of which it grows, 
the people who form it and are formed by it, I will 
translate the whole, or nearly the whole, of the idyll (it 
is not long) in which the poem occurs. 

The idyll is dramatic. Somewhere about two hundred 
and eighty years before the Christian era, a couple of 
Syracusan women, staying at Alexandria, agreed on the 
occasion of a great religious solemnity, — the feast of 
Adonis, — to go together to the palace of King Ptolemy 
Philadelphus, to see the image of Adonis, which the 
queen Arsinoe, Ptolemy's wife, had had decorated with 
peculiar magnificence. A hymn, by a celebrated per- 
former, was to be recited over the image. The names 
of the two women are Gorgo and Praxinoe ; their maids, 
who are mentioned in the poem, are called Eunoe and 
Eutychis. Gorgo comes by appointment to Praxinoe's 
house to fetch her, and there the dialogue begins : — 
Gorgo. — Is Praxinoe at home ? 

Praxinoe. — My dear Gorgo, at last ! Yes, here I am. 
Eunoe, find a chair, — get a cushion for it. 
Gorgo. — It will do beautifully as it is. 
Praxinoe. — Do sit down. 

Gorgo. — Oh, this gad-about spirit ! I could hardly 
get to you, Praxinoe, through all the crowd and all the 
carriages. Nothing but heavy boots, nothing but men in 
uniform. And what a journey it is ! My dear child, you 
really live too far off. 

Praxinoe. — It is all that insane husband of mine. He 
has chosen to come out here to the end of the world, 
and take a hole of a place, — for a house it is not, — on 
purpose that you and I might not be neighbours. He 



190 PAGAN AND MEDIAEVAL 

is always just the same ; — anything to quarrel with one ! 
anything for spite ! 

Gorgo. — My dear, don't talk so of your husband 
before the little fellow. Just see how astonished he 
looks at you. Never mind, Zopyrio, my pet, she is not 
talking about papa. 

Praxinoe. — Good heavens ! the child does really un- 
derstand. 

Gorgo. — Pretty papa ! 

Praxi7ioe. — That pretty papa of his the other day 
(though I told him beforehand to mind what he was 
about), when I sent him to a shop to buy soap and 
rouge, brought me home salt instead j — stupid, great, big, 
interminable animal ! 

Gorgo. — Mine is just the fellow to him. . . . But 
never mind now, get on your things and let us be off to 
the palace to see the Adonis. I hear the queen's deco- 
rations are something splendid. 

Praxinoe. — In grand people's houses everything is 
grand. What things you have seen in Alexandria ! What 
a deal you will have to tell to anybody who has never 
been here ! 

Gorgo. — Come, we ought to be going. 

Praxinoe. — Every day is holiday to people who have 
nothing to do. Eunoe, pick up your work ; and take care, 
lazy girl, how you leave it lying about again; the cats 
find it just the bed they like. Come, stir yourself, fetch 
me some water, quick ! I wanted the water first, and the 
girl brings me the soap. Never mind ; give it me. Not 
all that, extravagant ! Now pour out the water ; — stupid ! 
why don't you take care of my dress ? That will do. 



RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 191 

I have got my hands washed as it pleased God. Where 
is the key of the large wardrobe? Bring it here; — 
quick ! 

Gorgo. — Praxinoe, you can't think how well that dress, 
made full, as you've got it, suits you. Tell me, how 
much did it cost ? — the dress by itself, I mean. 

Praxinoe. — Don't talk of it, Gorgo : more than eight 
guineas of good hard money. And about the work on it 
I have almost worn my life out. 

Gorgo. — Well, you couldn't have done better. 

Praxinoe. — Thank you. Bring me my shawl, and put 
my hat properly on my head ; — properly. No, child (to 
Jier little boy), I am not going to take you ; there's a bogy 
on horseback, who bites. Cry as much as you like ; 
I'm not going to have you lamed for life. Now we'll 
start. Nurse, take the little one and amuse him ; call 
the dog in, and shut the street-door. (They go out.) 
Good heavens ! what a crowd of people ! How on earth 
are we ever to get through all this ? They are like 
ants : you can't count them. My dearest Gorgo, what 
will become of us? here are the royal Horse Guards. 
My good man, don't ride over me ! Look at that bay 
horse rearing bolt upright ; what a vicious one ! Eunoe, 
you mad girl, do take care ! — that horse will certainly be 
the death of the man on his back. How glad I am 
now, that I left the child safe at home ! 

Gorgo. — All right, Praxinoe, we are safe behind them ; 
and they have gone on to where they are stationed. 

Praxinoe. — Well, yes, I begin to revive again. From 
the time I was a little girl I have had more horror of 
horses and snakes than of anything in the world. Let 



192 PAGAN AND MEDIAEVAL 

us get on ; here's a great crowd coming this way 
upon us. 

Gorgo (to an old woman). — Mother, are you from the 
palace ? 

Old Woman. — Yes, my dears. 

Gorgo. — Has one a tolerable chance of getting there ? 

Old Woman. — My pretty young lady, the Greeks got 
to Troy by dint of trying hard ; trying will do anything 
in this world. 

Gorgo. — The old creature has delivered herself of an 
oracle and departed. 

Praxinoe. — Women can tell you everything about 
everything, Jupiter's marriage with Juno not excepted. 

Gorgo. — Look, Praxinoe, what a squeeze at the palace 
gates ! 

Praxinoe. — Tremendous ! Take hold of me, Gorgo ; 
and you, Eunoe, take hold of Eutychis ! — tight hold, or 
you'll be lost. Here we go in all together. Hold tight 
to us, Eunoe ! Oh, dear ! oh, dear ! Gorgo, there's my 
scarf torn right in two. For heaven's sake, my good 
man, as you hope to be saved, take care of my dress ! 

Stranger. — I'll do what I can, but it doesn't depend 
upon me. 

Praxinoe. — What heaps of people ! They push like a 
drove of pigs. 

Stranger. — Don't be frightened, ma'am, we are all 
right. 

Praxinoe. — May you be all right, my dear sir, to the 
last day you live, for the care you have taken of us ! 
What a kind, considerate man ! There is Eunoe jammed 
in a squeeze. Push, you goose, push ! Capital ! We 



RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 1 93 

are all of us the right side of the door, as the bridegroom 
said when he had locked himself in with the bride. 

Gorgo. — Praxinoe, come this way. Do but look at 
that work, how delicate it is! — how exquisite! Why, 
they might wear it in heaven. 

Praxinoe. — Heavenly patroness of needlewomen, what 
hands were hired to do that work? Who designed 
those beautiful patterns? They seem to stand up and 
move about, as if they were real ; — as if they were living 
things, and not needlework. Well, man is a wonderful 
creature ! And look, look, how charming he lies there 
on his silver couch, with just a soft down on his cheeks, 
that beloved Adonis, — Adonis, whom one loves, even 
though he is dead ! 

Afiother Stranger. — You wretched women, do stop your 
incessant chatter ! Like turtles, you go on for ever. 
They are enough to kill one with their broad lingo, — 
nothing but a, a, a. 

Gorgo. — Lord, where does the man come from ? What 
is it to you if we are chatterboxes ? Order about your 
own servants ! Do you give orders to Syracusan women ? 
If you want to know, we came originally from Corinth, 
as Bellerophon did; we speak Peloponnesian. I sup- 
pose Dorian women may be allowed to have a Dorian 
accent. 

Praxinoe. — Oh, honey-sweet Proserpine, let us have no 
more masters than the one we've got ! We don't the 
least care for you; pray don't trouble yourself for 
nothing. 

Gorgo. — Be quiet, Praxinoe t That first-rate singer, 
the Argive woman's daughter, is going to sing the Adonis. 

o 



194 PAGAN AND MEDI/EVAL 

hymn. She is the same who was chosen to sing the dirge 
last year. We are sure to have something first-rate from 
her. She is going through her airs and graces ready to 
begin. — ■ 

So far the dialogue ; and, as it stands in the original, 
it can hardly be praised too highly. It is a page torn 
fresh out of the book of human life. What freedom ! 
What animation ! What gaiety 1 What naturalness ! It 
is said that Theocritus, in composing this poem, borrowed 
from a work of Sophron, a poet of an earlier and better 
time ; but, even if this is so, the form is still Theocritus's 
own, and how excellent is that form, how masterly ! 
And this in a Greek poem of the decadence ; for Theo- 
critus's poetry, after all, is poetry of the decadence. 
When such is Greek poetry of the decadence, what must 
be Greek poetry of the prime ? 

Then the singer begins her hymn : — 

" Mistress, who lovest the haunts of Golgi, and Idalium, 
and high-peaked Eryx, Aphrodite that playest with gold ! 
how have the delicate-footed Hours, after twelve months, 
brought thy Adonis back to thee from the ever-flowing 
Acheron ! Tardiest of the immortals are the boon 
Hours, but all mankind wait their approach with longing, 
for they ever bring something with them. O Cypris, 
Dione's child ! thou didst change — so is the story among 
men — Berenice from mortal to immortal, by dropping 
ambrosia into her fair bosom ; and in gratitude to thee 
for this, O thou of many names and many temples ! 
Berenice's daughter, Arsinoe, lovely Helen's living coun- 
terpart, makes much of Adonis with all manner of 
braveries. 



RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 1 95 

" All fruits that the tree bears are laid before him, all 
treasures of the garden in silver baskets, and alabaster 
boxes, gold-inlaid, of Syrian ointment ; and all confec- 
tionery that cunning women make on their kneading-tray, 
kneading up every sort of flowers with white meal, and 
all that they make of sweet honey and delicate oil, 
and all winged and creeping things are here set before 
him. And there are built for him green bowers with 
wealth of tender anise, and little boy-loves flutter about 
over them, like young nightingales trying their new wings 
on the tree, from bough to bough. Oh, the ebony, the 
gold, the eagle of white ivory that bears aloft his cup- 
bearer to Kronos-born Zeus ! And up there, see ! a second 
couch strewn for lovely Adonis, scarlet coverlets softer 
than sleep itself (so Miletus and the Samian wool-grower 
will say); Cypris has hers, and the rosy-armed Adonis 
has his, that eighteen or nineteen-year-old bridegroom. 
His kisses will not wound, the hair on his lip is yet 
light. 

" Now, Cypris, good-night, we leave thee with thy 
bridegroom ; but to-morrow morning, with the earliest 
dew, we will one and all bear him forth to where the 
waves splash upon the sea-strand, and letting loose our 
locks, and letting fall our robes, with bosoms bare, we 
will set up this, our melodious strain : 

" ' Beloved Adonis, alone of the demigods (so men 
say) thou art permitted to visit both us and Acheron ! 
This lot had neither Agamemnon, nor the mighty moon- 
struck hero Ajax, nor Hector the first-born of Hecuba's 
twenty children, nor Patroclus, nor Pyrrhus who came 
home from Troy, nor those yet earlier Lapithse and the 
o 2 



lg6 PAGAN AND MEDIEVAL 

sons of Deucalion, nor the Pelasgians, the root of Argos 
and of Pelops' isle. Be gracious to us now, loved 
Adonis, and be favourable to us for the year to come ! 
Dear to us hast thou been at this coming, dear to us 
shalt thou be when thou comest again.' " 

The poem concludes with a characteristic speech from 
Gorgo : — 

" Praxinoe, certainly women are wonderful things. 
That lucky woman to know all that ! and luckier still 
to have such a splendid voice ! And now we must see 
about getting home. My husband has not had his dinner. 
That man is all vinegar, and nothing else ; and if you 
keep him waiting for his dinner, he's dangerous to go 
near. Adieu, precious Adonis, and may you find us all 
well when you come next year ! " 

So, with the hymn still in her ears, says the incorrigible 
Gorgo. 

But what a hymn that is ! Of religious emotion, in 
our acceptation of the words, and of the comfort spring- 
ing from religious emotion, not a particle. And yet 
many elements of religious emotion are contained in the 
beautiful story of Adonis. Symbolically treated, as the 
thoughtful man might treat it, as the Greek mysteries 
undoubtedly treated it, this story was capable of a noble 
and touching application, and could lead the soul to 
elevating and consoling thoughts. Adonis was the sun 
in his summer and in his winter course, in his time 
of triumph and his time of defeat ; but in his time of 
triumph still moving towards his defeat, in his time of 
defeat still returning towards his triumph. Thus he 
became an emblem of the power of life and the bloom 



RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 1 97 

of beauty, the power of human life and the bloom of 
human beauty, hastening inevitably to diminution and 
decay, yet in that very decay finding 

" Hope, and a renovation without end." 

But nothing of this appears in the story as prepared for 
popular religious use, as presented to the multitude in a 
popular religious ceremony. Its treatment is not devoid 
of a certain grace and beauty, but it has nothing what- 
ever that is elevating, nothing that is consoling, nothing 
that is in our sense of the word religious. The religious 
ceremonies of Christendom, even on occasion of the 
most joyful and mundane matters, present the multitude 
with strains of profoundly religious character, such as the 
Kyrie eleison and the Te Deum. But this Greek hymn 
to Adonis adapts itself exactly to the tone and temper of 
a gay and pleasure-loving multitude, — of light-hearted 
people, like Gorgo and Praxinoe, whose moral nature is 
much of the same calibre as that of Phillina in Goethe's 
Wilhehn Meister, people who seem never made to be 
serious, never made to be sick or sorry. And, if they 
happen to be sick or sorry, what will they do then ? 
But that we have no right to ask. Phillina, within the 
enchanted bounds of Goethe's novel, Gorgo and Praxi- 
noe, within the enchanted bounds of Theocritus's poem, 
never will be sick and sony, never can be sick and sorry. 
The ideal, cheerful, sensuous, pagan life is not sick or 
sorry. No ; yet its natural end is in the sort of life 
which Pompeii and Herculaneum bring so vividly before 
us, — a life which by no means in itself suggests the 
thought of horror and misery, which even, in many 



198 PAGAN AND MEDIEVAL 

ways, gratifies the senses and the understanding ; but by 
the very intensity and unremittingness of its appeal to 
the senses and the understanding, by its stimulating a 
single side of us too absolutely, ends by fatiguing and 
revolting us ; ends by leaving us with a sense of con- 
finement, of oppression, — with a desire for an utter 
change, for clouds, storms, effusion and relief. 

In the beginning of the thirteenth century, when the 
clouds and storms had come, when the gay sensuous 
pagan life was gone, when men were not living by the 
senses and understanding, when they were looking for 
the speedy coming of Antichrist, there appeared in 
Italy, to the north of Rome, in the beautiful Umbrian 
country at the foot of the Apennines, a figure of the 
most magical power and charm, St. Francis. His cen- 
tury is, I think, the most interesting in the history ot 
Christianity after its primitive age, more interesting than 
even the century of the Reformation ; and one of the 
chief figures, perhaps the very chief, to which this inte- 
rest attaches itself, is St. Francis. And why ? Because 
of the profound popular instinct which enabled him, 
more than any man since the primitive age, to fit religion 
for popular use. He brought religion to the people. 
He founded the most popular body of ministers of 
religion that has ever existed in the Church. He trans- 
formed monachism by uprooting the stationary monk, 
delivering him from the bondage of property, and send- 
ing him, as a mendicant friar, to be a stranger and 
sojourner, not in the wilderness, but in the most crowded 
haunts of men, to console them and to do them good. 
This popular instinct of his is at the bottom of his 



RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 1 99 

famous marriage with poverty. Poverty and suffering 
are the condition of the people, the multitude, the 
immense majority of mankind ; and it was towards this 
people that his soul yearned. " He listens," it was said 
of him, " to those to whom God himself will not listen." 

So in return, as no other man he was listened to. 
When an Umbrian town or village heard of his approach, 
the whole population went out in joyful procession to 
meet him, with green boughs, flags, music, and songs ot 
gladness. The master, who began with two disciples, 
could in his own lifetime (and he died at forty-four) 
collect to keep Whitsuntide with him, in presence of an 
immense multitude, five thousand of his Minorites. And 
thus he found fulfilment to his prophetic cry : " I hear in 
my ears the sound of the tongues of all the nations who 
shall come unto us ; Frenchmen, Spaniards, Germans, 
Englishmen. The Lord will make of us a great people, 
even unto the ends of the earth." 

Prose could not satisfy this ardent soul, and he made 
poetry. Latin was too learned for this simple, popular 
nature, and he composed in his mother tongue, in 
Italian. The beginnings of the mundane poetry of 
the Italians are in Sicily, at the court of kings ; the 
beginnings of their religious poetry are in Umbria, with 
St. Francis. His are the humble upper waters of a 
mighty stream : at the beginning of the thirteenth cen- 
tury it is St. Francis, at the end, Dante. Now it happens 
that St. Francis, too, like the Alexandrian songstress, 
has his hymn for the sun, for Adonis ; Ca?itide of the 
Sun, Canticle of the Creatures, — the poem goes by both 
names. Like the Alexandrian hymn, it is designed for 



200 PAGAN AND MEDIAEVAL 

popular use, but not for use by King Ptolemy's people ; 
artless in language, irregular in rhythm, it matches with 
the childlike genius that produced it, and the simple 
natures that loved and repeated it : — 

" O most high, almighty, good Lord God, to thee 
belong praise, glory, honour, and all blessing ! 

" Praised be my Lord God with all his creatures ; and 
specially our brother the sun, who brings us the day, and 
who brings us the light ; fair is he, and shining with a 
very great splendour : O Lord, he signifies to us thee ! 

" Praised be my Lord for our sister the moon, and 
for the stars, the which he has set clear and lovely in 
heaven. 

" Praised be my Lord for our brother the wind, and 
for air and cloud, calms and all weather, by the which 
thou upholdest in life all creatures. 

" Praised be my Lord for our sister water, who is 
very serviceable unto us, and humble, and precious, and 
clean. 

" Praised be my Lord for our brother fire, through 
whom thou givest us light in the darkness ; and he is 
bright, and pleasant, and very mighty, and strong. 

" Praised be my Lord for our mother the earth, the 
which doth sustain us and keep us, and bringeth forth 
divers fruits, and flowers of many colours, and grass. 

" Praised be my Lord for all those who pardon one 
another for his love's sake, and who endure weakness 
and tribulation; blessed are they who peaceably shall 
endure, for thou, O most Highest, shalt give them a 
crown ! 

" Praised be my Lord for our sister, the death of the 



RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 201 

body, from whom no man escapeth. Woe to him who 
dieth in mortal sin ! Blessed are they who are found 
walking by thy most holy will, for the second death shall 
have no power to do them harm. 

" Praise ye, and bless ye the Lord, and give thanks 
unto him, and serve him with great humility." 

It is natural that man should take pleasure in his 
senses. But it is natural, also, that he should take refuge 
in his heart and imagination from his misery. And when 
one thinks what human life is for the vast majority of 
mankind, how little of a feast for their senses it can pos- 
sibly be, one understands the charm for them of a refuge 
offered in the heart and imagination. Above all, when 
one thinks what human life was in the Middle Ages, one 
understands the charm of such a refuge. 

Now, the poetry of Theocritus's hymn is poetry treat- 
ing the world according to the demand of the senses ; 
the poetry of St. Francis's hymn is poetiy treating the 
world according to the demand of the heart and imagi- 
nation. The first takes the world by its outward, sensible 
side ; the second by its inward, symbolical side. The 
first admits as much of the world as is pleasure-giving ; 
the second admits the whole world, rough and smooth, 
painful and pleasure-giving, all alike, but all transfigured 
by the power of a spiritual emotion, all brought under a 
law of supersensual love, having its seat in the soul. It 
can thus even say : " Praised be my Lord for our sister, 
the death of the body." 

But these very words are, perhaps, an indication that 
we are touching upon an extreme. When we see Pom- 
peii, we can put our finger upon the pagan sentiment in 



202 PAGAN AND MEDIAEVAL 

its extreme. And when we read of Monte Alverno and 
the stigmata ; when we read of the repulsive, because self- 
caused, sufferings of the end of St. Francis's life ; when we 
find even him saying, " I have sinned against my brother 
the ass," meaning by these words that he had been too 
hard upon his own body ; when we find him assailed, even 
himself, by the doubt " whether he who had destroyed 
himself by the severity of his penances could find mercy 
in eternity," we can put our finger on the mediaeval 
Christian sentiment in its extreme. Human nature is 
neither all senses and understanding, nor all heart and 
imagination. Pompeii was a sign that for humanity at 
large the measure of sensualism had been over-passed ; 
St. Francis's doubt was a sign that for humanity at large 
the measure of spiritualism had been over-passed. Hu- 
manity, in its violent rebound from one extreme, had 
swung from Pompeii to Monte Alverno ; but it was sure 
not to stay there. 

The Renaissance is, in part, a return towards the pagan 
spirit, in the special sense in which I have been using the 
word pagan ; a return towards the life of the senses and 
the understanding. The Reformation, on the other hand, 
is the very opposite to this ; in Luther there is nothing 
Greek or pagan ; vehemently as he attacked the adora- 
tion of St. Francis, Luther had himself something of St. 
Francis in him ; he was a thousand times more akin to 
St. Francis than to Theocritus or to Voltaire. The Re- 
formation — I do not mean the inferior piece given under 
that name, by Henry the Eighth and a second-rate com- 
pany, in this island, but the real Reformation, the German 
Reformation, Luther's Reformation — was a reaction of 



RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 203 

the moral and spiritual sense against the carnal and pagan 
sense ; it was a religious revival like St. Francis's, but 
this time against the Church of Rome, not within her ; 
for the carnal and pagan sense had now, in the govern- 
ment of the Church of Rome herself, its prime repre- 
sentative. But the grand reaction against the rule of the 
heart and imagination, the strong return towards the rule 
of the senses and understanding, is in the eighteenth 
century. And this reaction has had no more brilliant 
champion than a man of the nineteenth, of whom I 
have already spoken • a man who could feel not only 
the pleasurableness but the poetry of the life of the 
senses (and the life of the senses has its deep poetry); 
a man who, in his very last poem, divided the whole 
world into " barbarians and Greeks," — Heinrich Heine. 
No man has reproached the Monte Alverno extreme in 
sentiment, the Christian extreme, the heart and imagina- 
tion subjugating the senses and understanding, more 
bitterly than Heine ; no man has extolled the Pompeii 
extreme, the pagan extreme, more rapturously. 

"All through the Middle Age these sufferings, this 
fever, this over-tension lasted ; and we moderns still feel 
in all our limbs the pain and weakness from them. 
Even those of us who are cured have still to live with a 
hospital-atmosphere all around us, and find ourselves as 
wretched in it as a strong man among the sick. Some 
day or other, when humanity shall have got quite well 
again, when the body and soul shall have made their 
peace together, the factitious quarrel which Christianity 
has cooked up between them will appear something 
hardly comprehensible. The fairer and happier genera- 



204 PAGAN AND MEDIAEVAL 

tions, offspring of unfettered unions, that will rise up and 
bloom in the atmosphere of a religion of pleasure, will 
smile sadly when they think of their poor ancestors, 
whose life was passed in melancholy abstinence from 
the joys of this beautiful earth, and who faded away 
into spectres, from the mortal compression which they 
put upon the warm and glowing emotions of sense. 
Yes, with assurance I say it, our descendants will be 
fairer and happier than we are ; for I am a believer in 
progress, and I hold God to be a kind being who has 
intended man to be happy." 

That is Heine's sentiment, in the prime of life, in the 
glow of activity, amid the brilliant whirl of Paris. I 
will no more blame it than I blamed the sentiment of 
the Greek hymn to Adonis. I wish to decide nothing as 
of my own authority ; the great art of criticism is to get 
oneself out of the way and to let humanity decide. Well, 
the sentiment of the "religion of pleasure" has much 
that is natural in it ; humanity will gladly accept it if it 
can live by it ; to live by it one must never be sick or 
sorry, and the old, ideal, limited, pagan world never, I 
have said, was sick or sorry, never at least shows itself 
to us sick or sorry : — 

"What pipes and timbrels ! what wild ecstasy ! " 

For our imagination, Gorgo and Praxinoe cross the 
human stage chattering in their blithe Doric, — like turtles, 
as the cross stranger said, — and keep gaily chattering on 
till they disappear. But in the new, real, immense, post- 
pagan world, — in the barbarian world, — the shock of acci- 
dent is unceasing, the serenity of existence is perpetually 



RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 205 

troubled, not even a Greek like Heine can get across the 
mortal stage without bitter calamity. How does the 
sentiment of the "religion of pleasure" serve then? does 
it help, does it console ? Can a man live by it ? Heine 
again shall answer; Heine just twenty years older, 
stricken with incurable disease, waiting for death : — 

" The great pot stands smoking before me, but I have 
no spoon to help myself. What does it profit me that 
my health is drunk at banquets out of gold cups and in 
the most exquisite wines, if I myself, while these ovations 
are going on, lonely and cut off from the pleasures of 
the v/orld, can only just wet my lips with barley-water ? 
What good does it do me that all the roses of Shiraz open 
their leaves and burn for me with passionate tenderness ? 
Alas ! Shiraz is some two thousand leagues from the Rue 
d' Amsterdam, where in the solitude of my sick chamber 
all the perfume I smell is that of hot towels. Alas ! the 
mockery of God is heavy upon me ! The great author 
of the universe, the Aristophanes of Heaven, has deter- 
mined to make the petty earthly author, the so-called 
Aristophanes of Germany, feel to his heart's core what 
pitiful needle-pricks his cleverest sarcasms have been, 
compared with the thunderbolts which his divine humour 
can launch against feeble mortals ! . . . 

" In the year 1340, says the Chronicle of Limburg, 
all over Germany everybody was strumming and hum- 
ming certain songs more lovely and delightful than any 
which had ever yet been known in German countries ; 
and all people, old and young, the women particularly, 
were perfectly mad about them, so that from morning 
till night you heard nothing else. Only, the Chronicle 



206 PAGAN AND MEDIEVAL 

adds, the author of these songs happened to be a young 
clerk afflicted with leprosy, and living apart from all the 
world in a desolate place. The excellent reader does not 
require to be told how horrible a complaint was leprosy 
in the Middle Ages, and how the poor wretches who had 
this incurable plague were banished from society, and 
had to keep at a distance from every human being. Like 
living corpses, in a grey gown reaching down to the feet, 
and with the hood brought over their face, they went 
about, carrying in their hands an enormous rattle, called 
Saint Lazarus's rattle. With this rattle they gave notice 
of their approach, that every one might have time to get 
out of their way. This poor clerk, then, whose poetical 
gift the Limburg Chronicle extols, was a leper, and 
he sate moping in the dismal deserts of his misery, 
whilst all Germany, gay and tuneful, was praising his 
songs. 

"Sometimes, in my sombre visions of the night, I 
imagine that I see before me the poor leprosy-stricken 
clerk of the Limburg Chronicle, and then from under his 
grey hood his distressed eyes look out upon me in a 
fixed and strange fashion ; but the next instant he dis- 
appears, and I hear dying away in the distance, like 
the echo of a dream, the dull creak of Saint Lazarus's 
rattle." 

We have come a long way from Theocritus there ! the 
expression of that has nothing of the clear, positive, 
happy, pagan character ; it has much more the character 
of one of the indeterminate grotesques of the suffering 
Middle Age. Profoundness and power it has, though at 
the same time it is not truly poetical ; it is not natural 



RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 207 

enough for that, there is too much waywardness in it, too 
much bravado. But as a condition of sentiment to be 
popular,— to be a comfort for the mass of mankind, under 
the pressure of calamity, to live by, — what a manifest 
failure is this last word of the religion of pleasure ! One 
man in many millions, a Heine, may console himself, and 
keep himself erect in suffering, by a colossal irony of this 
sort, by covering himself and the universe with the red 
fire of this sinister mockery; but the many millions 
cannot, — cannot if they would. That is where the senti- 
ment of a religion of sorrow has such a vast advantage 
over the sentiment of a religion of pleasure ; in its power 
to be a general, popular, religious sentiment, a stay for 
the mass of mankind, whose lives are full of hardship. 
It really succeeds in conveying far more joy, far more 
of what the mass of mankind are so much without, than 
its rival. I do not mean joy in prospect only, but joy in 
possession, actual enjoyment of the world. Mediaeval 
Christianity is reproached with its gloom and austerities ; 
it assigns the material world, says Heine, to the devil. 
But yet what a fulness of delight does St. Francis manage 
to draw from this material world itself, and from its com- 
monest and most universally enjoyed elements, — sun, air, 
earth, water, plants ! His hymn expresses a far more 
cordial sense of happiness, even in the material world, 
than the hymn of Theocritus. It is this which made the 
fortune of Christianity, — its gladness, not its sorrow ; not 
its assigning the spiritual world to Christ and the material 
world to the devil, but its drawing from the spiritual 
world a source of joy so abundant that it ran over upon 
the material world and transfigured it. 



208 PAGAN AND MEDIAEVAL 

I have said a great deal of harm of paganism; and, 
taking paganism to mean a state of things which it is 
commonly taken to mean, and which did really exist, 
no more harm than it well deserved. Yet I must not 
end without reminding the reader, that before this state 
of things appeared, there was an epoch in Greek life — 
in pagan life — of the highest possible beauty and value ; 
an epoch which alone goes far towards making Greece 
the Greece we mean when we speak of Greece, — a 
country hardly less important to mankind than Judaea. 
The poetry of later paganism lived by the senses and 
understanding ; the poetry of mediaeval Christianity 
lived by the heart and imagination. But the main 
element of the modern spirit's life is neither the senses 
and understanding, nor the heart and imagination ; it is 
the imaginative reason. And there is a century in Greek 
life, — the century preceding the Peloponnesian war, from 
about the year 530 B.C. to about the year 430, — in which 
poetry made, it seems to me, the noblest, the most suc- 
cessful effort she has ever made as the priestess of the 
imaginative reason, of the element by which the modern 
spirit, if it would live right, has chiefly to live. Of this 
effort, of which the four great names are Simonides, 
Pindar, yEschylus, Sophocles, I must not now attempt 
more than the bare mention; but it is right, it is neces- 
sary, after all I have said, to indicate it. No doubt that 
effort was imperfect. Perhaps everything, take it at what 
point in its existence you will, carries within itself the 
fatal law of its own ulterior development. Perhaps, even 
of the life of Pindar's time, Pompeii was the inevitable 
bourne. Perhaps the life of their beautiful Greece 



RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 20$ 

could not afford to its poets all that fulness of varied 
experience, all that power of emotion, which 

". . . the heavy and the weary weight 
Of all this unintelligible world " 

affords to the poet of after-times. Perhaps in Sophocles 
the thinking- power a little overbalances the religious 
sense, as in Dante the religious sense overbalances the 
thinking-power. The present has to make its own poetry, 
and not even Sophocles and his compeers, any more 
than Dante and Shakspeare, are enough for it. That I 
will not dispute, nor will I set up the Greek poets, from 
Pindar to Sophocles, as objects of blind worship. But 
no other poets so well show to the poetry of the present 
the way it must take ; no other poets have lived so much 
by the imaginative reason; no other poets have made 
their work so well balanced ; no other poets, who have 
so well satisfied the thinking-power, have so well satisfied 
the religious sense : — 

"Oh! that my lot may lead me in the path of holy 
innocence of word and deed, the path which august 
laws ordain, laws that in the highest empyrean had their 
birth, of which Heaven is the father alone, neither did 
the race of mortal men beget them, nor shall oblivion 
ever put them to sleep. The power of God is mighty in 
them, and groweth not old." 

Let St. Francis — nay, or Luther either — beat that ! 



JOUBERT. 

Why should we ever treat of any dead authors but the 
famous ones ? Mainly for this reason : because, from 
these famous personages, home or foreign, whom we all 
know so well, and of whom so much has been said, the 
amount of stimulus which they contain for us has been 
in a great measure disengaged ; people have formed their 
opinion about them, and do not readily change it. One 
may write of them afresh, combat received opinions 
about them, even interest one's readers in so doing ; but 
the interest one's readers receive has to do, in general, 
rather with the treatment than with the subject ; they are 
susceptible of a lively impression rather of the course 
of the discussion itself, — its turns, vivacity, and novelty, 
— than of the genius of the author who is the occasion 
of it. And yet what is really precious and inspiring, in 
all that we get from literature, except this sense of an 
immediate contact with genius itself, and the stimulus 
towards what is true and excellent which we derive from 
it ? Now in literature, besides the eminent men of genius 
who have had their deserts in the way of fame, besides 
the eminent men of ability who have often had far more 
than their deserts in the way of fame, there are a certain 
number of personages who have been real men of genius r 



JOUBERT. 2 1 1 

— by which I mean, that they have had a genuine gift 
for what is true and excellent, and are therefore capable 
of emitting a life-giving stimulus, — but who, for some 
reason or other, in most cases for very valid reasons, 
have remained obscure, nay, beyond a narrow circle in 
their own country, unknown. It is salutary from time to 
time to come across a genius of this kind, and to extract 
his honey. Often he has more of it for us, as I have 
already said, than greater men ; for, though it is by no 
means true that from what is new to us there is most to 
be learnt, it is yet indisputably true that from what is 
new to us we in general learn most. 

Of a genius of this kind, Joseph Joubert, I am now 
going to speak. His name is, I believe, almost unknown 
in England ; and even in France, his native country, it 
is not famous. M. Sainte-Beuve has given of him one 
of his ' incomparable portraits; but, — besides that even 
M. Sainte-Beuve's writings are far less known amongst 
us than they deserve to be, — every country has its own 
point of view from which a remarkable author may most 
profitably be seen and studied. 

Joseph Joubert was born (and his date should be 
remarked) in 1754, at Montignac, a little town in Peri- 
gord. His father was a doctor with small means and a 
large family ; and Joseph, the eldest, had his own way 
to make in the world. He was for eight years, as pupil 
first, and afterwards as an assistant-master, in the public 
school of Toulouse, then managed by the Jesuits, who 
seem to have left in him a most favourable opinion, not 
only of their tact and address, but of their really good 
qualities as teachers and directors. Compelled by the 
p 2 ' 



212 JOUBERT. 

weakness of his health to give up, at twenty-two, the 
profession of teaching, he passed two important years of 
his life in hard study, at home at Montignac ; and came 
in 1778 to try his fortune in the literary world of Paris, 
then perhaps the most tempting field which has ever yet 
presented itself to a young man of letters. He knew 
Diderot, D'Alembert, Marmontel, Laharpe ; he became 
intimate with one of the celebrities of the next literary 
generation, then, like himself, a young man, — Chateau- 
briand's friend, the future Grand Master of the University, 
Fontanes. But, even then, it began to be remarked of 
him, that M. Joubert s" i?iquietait de perfection bien plus 
que de gloire — " cared far more about perfecting himself 
than about making himself a reputation." His severity 
of morals may perhaps have been rendered easier to 
him by the delicacy of his health ; but the delicacy of 
his health will not by itself account for his changeless 
preference of being to seeming, knowing to showing, 
studying to publishing; for what terrible public per- 
formers have some invalids been ! This preference he 
retained all through his life, and it is by this that he is 
characterised. " He has chosen," Chateaubriand (adopt- 
ing Epicurus's famous words) said of him, " to hide his 
lifer Of a life which its owner was bent on hiding 
there can be but little to tell. Yet the only two public 
incidents of Joubert's life, slight as they are, do all con- 
cerned in them so much credit that they deserve mention. 
In 1790 the Constituent Assembly made the office of 
justice of the peace elective throughout France. The 
people of Montignac retained such an impression of the 
character of their young townsman, — one of Plutarch's 



JOUBERT. 213 

men of virtue, as he had lived amongst them, simple, 
studious, severe, — that, though he had left them for 
years, they elected him in his absence without his knowing 
anything about it. The appointment little suited Joubert's 
wishes or tastes ; but at such a moment he thought it 
wrong to decline it. He held it for two years, the legal 
term, discharging its duties with a firmness and integrity 
which were long remembered ; and then, when he went 
out of office, his fellow-townsmen re-elected him. But 
Joubert thought that he had now accomplished his duty 
towards them, and he went back to the retirement which 
he loved. That seems to us a little episode of the great 
French Revolution worth remembering. The sage who 
was asked by the king, why sages were seen at the 
doors of kings, but not kings at the doors of sages, 
replied, that it was because sages knew what was good 
for them, and kings did not. But at Montignac the 
king — for in 1790 the people in France was king with 
a vengeance — knew what was good for him, and came to 
the door of the sage. 

The other incident was this. When Napoleon, in 1 809, 
reorganised the public instruction of France, founded the 
University, and made M. de Fontanes its Grand Master, 
Fontanes had to submit to the Emperor a list of persons 
to form the council or governing body of the new Uni- 
versity. Third on his list, after two distinguished names, 
Fontanes placed the unknown name of Joubert. " This 
name," he said in his accompanying memorandum to 
the Emperor, "is not known as the two first are; and 
yet this is the nomination to which I attach most im- 
portance. I have known M. Joubert all my life. His 



214 JOUBERT. 

character and intelligence are of the very highest order. 
I shall rejoice if your Majesty will accept my guarantee 
for him." Napoleon trusted his Grand Master, and 
Joubert became a councillor of the University. It is 
something that a man, elevated to the highest posts ot 
State, should not forget his obscure friends ; or that, if 
he remembers and places them, he should regard in 
placing them their merit rather than their obscurity. It 
is more, in the eyes of those whom the necessities, real or 
supposed, of apolitical system have long familiarised with 
such cynical disregard of fitness in the distribution of office, 
to see a minister and his master alike zealous, in giving 
away places, to give them to the best men to be found. 

Between 1792 and 1809 Joubert had married. His 
life was passed between Villeneuve-sur-Yonne, where his 
wife's family lived, — a pretty little Burgundian town, by 
which the Lyons railroad now passes, — and Paris. Here, 
in a house in the Rue St.-Honore, in a room very high 
up, and admitting plenty of the light which he so loved, 
— a room from which he saw, in his own words, "a great 
deal of sky and very little earth," — among the treasures 
of a library collected with infinite pains, taste, and skill, 
from which every book he thought ill of was rigidly 
excluded, — he never would possess either a complete 
Voltaire or a complete Rousseau, — the happiest hours 
of his life were passed. In the circle of one of those 
women who leave a sort of perfume in literary history, 
and who have the gift of inspiring successive generations 
of readers with an indescribable regret not to have known 
them, — Pauline de Montmorin, Madame de Beaumont, 
— he had become intimate with nearly all which at that 



JOUBERT. 215 

time, in the Paris world of letters or of society, was most 
attractive and promising. Amongst his acquaintances 
one only misses the names of Madame de Stael and 
Benjamin Constant; neither of them was to his taste, 
and with Madame de Stael he always refused to become 
acquainted ; he thought she had more vehemence than 
truth, and more heat than light. Years went on, and his 
friends became conspicuous authors or statesmen; but 
Joubert remained in the shade. His constitution was of 
such fragility that how he lived so long, or accomplished 
so much as he did, is a wonder; his soul had, for its 
basis of operations, hardly any body at all : both from 
his stomach and from his chest he seems to have had con- 
stant suffering, though he lived by rule, and was as abste- 
mious as a Hindoo. Often, after overwork in thinking, 
reading, or talking, he remained for days together in a 
state of utter prostration, — condemned to absolute silence 
and inaction; too happy if the agitation of his mind 
would become quiet also, and let him have the repose of 
which he stood in so much need. With this weakness 
of health, these repeated suspensions of energy, he was 
incapable of the prolonged contention of spirit necessary 
for the creation of great works ; but he read and thought 
immensely ; he was an unwearied note-taker, a charming 
letter-writer ; above all, an excellent and delightful talker. 
The gaiety and amenity of his natural disposition were 
inexhaustible; and his spirit, too, was of astonishing 
elasticity ; he seemed to hold on to life by a single thread 
only, but that single thread was very tenacious. More 
and more, as his soul and knowledge ripened more and 
more, his friends pressed to his room in the Rue St.. 



2l6 JOUBERT. 

Honore ; often he received them in bed, for he seldom 
rose before three o'clock in the afternoon ; and at his 
bedroom-door, on his bad days, Madame Joubert stood 
sentry, trying, not always with success, to keep back the 
thirsty comers from the fountain which was forbidden to 
flow. Fontanes did nothing in the University without 
consulting him, and Joubert's ideas and pen were always 
at his friend's service. When he was in the country, at 
Villeneuve, the young priests of his neighbourhood used 
to resort to him, in order to profit by his library and by 
his conversation. He, like our Coleridge, was particu- 
larly qualified to attract men of this kind and to benefit 
them : retaining perfect independence of mind, he was 
religious ; he was a religious philosopher. As age came 
on, his infirmities became more and more overwhelming j 
some of his friends, too, died; others became so im- 
mersed in politics, that Joubert, who hated politics, saw 
them seldomer than of old ; but the moroseness of age 
and infirmity never touched him, and he never quarrelled 
with a friend or lost one. From these miseries he was 
preserved by that quality in him of which I have 
already spoken; a quality which is best expressed by 
a word, not of common use in English, — alas, I have 
too little in our national character of the quality which 
this word expresses, — his inborn, his constant amenity. 
He lived till the year 1824. On the 4th of May in that 
year he died, at the age of seventy. A day or two after 
his death, M. de Chateaubriand inserted in the Journal 
des D'ebats a short notice of him, perfect for its feeling, 
grace, and propriety. On ne vit da?is la m'emoire du 
monde, he says and says truly, que par des travaux pour 



JOUBERT. 217 

k tnonde — "a man can live in the world's memory only by 
what he has done for the world." But Chateaubriand used 
the privilege which his great name gave him to assert, 
delicately but firmly, Joubert's real and rare merits, and 
to tell the world what manner of man had just left it. 

Joubert's papers were accumulated in boxes and 
drawers. He had not meant them for publication; 
it was very difficult to sort them and to prepare them 
for it. Madame Joubert, his widow, had a scruple 
about giving them a publicity which her husband, she 
felt, would never have permitted. But, as her own end 
approached, the natural desire to leave of so remarkable 
a spirit some enduring memorial, some memorial to out- 
last the admiring recollection of the living who were so 
fast passing away, made her yield to the entreaties of 
his friends, and allow the printing, but for private circula- 
tion only, of a volume of his fragments. Chateaubriand 
edited it; it appeared in 1838, fourteen years after Jou- 
bert's death. The volume attracted the attention of those 
who were best fitted to appreciate it, and profoundly 
impressed them. M. Sainte-Beuve gave of it, in the 
Revue des Deux Mondes, the admirable notice of which 
I have already spoken ; and so much curiosity was ex- 
cited about Joubert, that the collection of his fragments, 
enlarged by many additions, was at last published for the 
benefit of the world in general. It has since been twice 
reprinted. The first or preliminary chapter has some 
fancifulness and affectation in it; the reader should begin 
with the second. 

I have likened Joubert to Coleridge ; and indeed the 
points of resemblance between the two men are nume- 



2l8 JOUBERT. 

xous. Both of them great and celebrated talkers, Joubert 
attracting pilgrims to his upper chamber in the Rue 
St.-Honore, as Coleridge attracted pilgrims to Mr. Gil- 
man's at Highgate; both of them desultory and incom- 
plete writers, — here they had an outward likeness with 
one another. Both of them passionately devoted to 
reading in a class of books, and to thinking on a class 
of subjects, out of the beaten line of the reading and 
thought of their day ; both of them ardent students and 
critics of old literature, poetry, and the metaphysics of 
religion ; both of them curious explorers of words, and 
of the latent significance hidden under the popular use 
of them ; both of them, in a certain sense, conservative 
in religion and politics, by antipathy to the narrow and 
shallow foolishness of vulgar modern liberalism; — here 
they had their inward and real likeness. But that in 
which the essence of their likeness consisted is this, — 
that they both had from nature an ardent impulse for 
seeking the genuine truth on all matters they thought 
about, and a gift for finding it and recognising it 
when it was found. To have the impulse for seeking 
this truth is much rarer than most people think ; to have 
the gift for finding it is, I need not say, very rare indeed. 
By this they have a spiritual relationship of the closest 
kind with one another, and they become, each of them, 
a source of stimulus and progress for all of us. 

Coleridge had less delicacy and penetration than 
Joubert, but more richness and power; his production, 
though far inferior to what his nature at first seemed to 
promise, was abundant and varied. Yet in all his pro- 
duction how much is there to dissatisfy us ! How many 



JOUBERT. 219 

reserves must be made in praising either his poetry, or 
his criticism, or his philosophy ! How little either of 
his poetry, or of his criticism, or of his philosophy, can 
we expect permanently to stand ! But that which will 
stand of Coleridge is this : the stimulus of his continual 
effort, — not a moral effort, for he had no morals, — but 
of his continual instinctive effort, crowned often with 
rich success, to get at and to lay bare the real truth of 
his matter in hand, whether that matter were literary, or 
philosophical, or political, or religious ; and this in a 
country where at that moment such an effort was almost 
unknown; where the most powerful minds threw them- 
selves upon poetry, which conveys truth, indeed, but 
conveys it indirectly; and where ordinary minds were 
so habituated to do without thinking altogether, to 
regard considerations of established routine and prac- 
tical convenience as paramount, that any attempt to 
introduce within the domain of these the disturbing 
element of thought, they were prompt to resent as an 
outrage. Coleridge's great action lay in his supplying in 
England, for many years and under critical circumstances, 
by the spectacle of this effort of his, a stimulus to all 
minds, in the generation which grew up round him, 
capable of profiting by it. His action will still be felt as 
long as the need for it continues ; when, with the cessa- 
tion of the need, the action too has ceased, Coleridge's 
memory, in spite of the disesteem — nay, repugnance — 
which his character may and must inspire, will yet for 
ever remain invested with that interest and gratitude 
which invests the memory of founders. 

M. de Remusat, indeed, reproaches Coleridge with 



220 JOUBERT. 

his jugements saugrenus ; the criticism of a gifted truth- 
finder ought not to be saugrenu ; so on this reproach we 
must pause for a moment. Saugrenu is a rather vulgar 
French word, but, like many other vulgar words, very 
expressive ; used as an epithet for a judgment, it means 
something like impudently absurd. The literary judg- 
ments of one nation about another are very apt to 
be saugrenus ; it is certainly true, as M. Sainte-Beuve 
remarks in answer to Goethe's complaint against the 
French that they have undervalued Du Bartas, that as to 
the estimate of its own authors every nation is the best 
judge ; the positive estimate of them, be it understood, 
not, of course, the estimate of them in comparison with 
the authors of other nations. Therefore a foreigner's 
judgments about the intrinsic merit of a nation's authors 
will generally, when at complete variance with that 
nation's own, be wrong ; but there is a permissible 
wrongness in these matters, and to that permissible 
wrongness there is a limit. When that limit is ex- 
ceeded, the wrong judgment becomes more than wrong, 
it becomes saugrenu, or impudently absurd. For instance, 
the high estimate which the French have of Racine is 
probably in great measure deserved; or, to take a yet 
stronger case, even the high estimate which Joubert had 
of the Abbe Delille is probably in great measure deserved; 
but the common disparaging judgment passed on Racine 
by English readers is not saugrenu, still less is that passed 
by them on the Abbe Delille saitgrenu, because the beauty 
of Racine, and of Delille too, so far as Delille's beauty 
goes, is eminently in their language, and this is a beauty 
which a foreigner cannot perfectly seize ; — this beauty of 



JOUBERT. 221 

diction, apicibus verborum ligata, as M. Sainte-Beuve, 
quoting Quintilian, says of Chateaubriand's. As to Cha- 
teaubriand himself, again, the common English judgment, 
which stamps him as a mere shallow rhetorician, all 
froth and vanity, is certainly wrong; one may even 
wonder that we English should judge Chateaubriand so 
wrongly, for his power goes far beyond beauty of diction ; 
it is a power, as well, of passion and sentiment, and this 
sort of power the English can perfectly well appreciate. 
One production of Chateaubriand's, Rene, is akin to the 
most popular productions of Byron, — to the Childe 
Harold or Manfred, — in spirit, equal to them in power, 
superior to them in form. But this work, I hardly know 
why, is almost unread in England. And only consider 
this criticism of Chateaubriand's on the true pathetic ! 
"It is a dangerous mistake, sanctioned, like so many 
other dangerous mistakes, by Voltaire, to suppose that 
the best works of imagination are those which draw most 
tears. One could name this or that melodrama, which 
no one would like to own having written, and which yet 
harrows the feelings far more than the ^Eneid. The 
true tears are those which are called forth by the beauty 
of poetry; there must be as much admiration in them as 
sorrow. They are the tears which come to our eyes 
when Priam says to Achilles, h\r\v 8', oP ovirai . . . — 
1 And I have endured, — the like whereof no soul upon 
the earth hath yet endured, — to carry to my lips the 
hand of him who slew my child ;' or when Joseph cries 
out : 'I am Joseph your brother, whom ye sold into 
Egypt.' " Who does not feel that the man who wrote 
that was no shallow rhetorician, but a born man of 



2 22 JOUBERT. 

genius, with the true instinct of genius for what is really- 
admirable? Nay, take these words of Chateaubriand, 
an old man of eighty, dying amidst the noise and bustle 
of the ignoble revolution of February 1848 : " Mon Dieu, 
mon Dieu, quand done, quand done serai-je delivre de 
tout ce monde, ce bruit; quand done, quand done cela 
fmira-t-il ?" Who, with any ear, does not feel that those 
are not the accents of a trumpery rhetorician, but of a 
rich and puissant nature, — the cry of the dying lion ? I 
repeat it, Chateaubriand is most ignorantly underrated 
in England ; and we English are capable of rating him 
far more correctly if we knew him better. Still, 
Chateaubriand has such real and great faults, he falls 
so decidedly beneath the rank of the truly greatest 
authors, that the depreciatory judgment passed on him 
in England, though ignorant and wrong, can hardly be 
said to transgress the limits of permissible ignorance ; it 
is not a jugement saugrenu. But when a critic denies 
genius to a literature which has produced Bossuet and 
Moliere, he passes the bounds ; and Coleridge's judg- 
ments on French literature and the French genius are 
undoubtedly, as M. de Remusat calls them, saitgrenus. 

And yet, such is the impetuosity of our poor human 
nature, such its proneness to rush to a decision with 
imperfect knowledge, that his having delivered a sau- 
grenu judgment or two in his life by no means proves 
a man not to have had, in comparison with his fellow- 
men in general, a remarkable gift for truth, or dis- 
qualifies him for being, by virtue of that gift, a source 
of vital stimulus for us. Joubert had far less smoke 
and turbid vehemence in him than Coleridge ; he had 



JOUBERT. 2 23 

also a far keener sense of what was absurd. But Joubert 
can write to M. Mole (the M. Mole who was afterwards 
Louis Philippe's well-known minister) : "As to your 
Milton, whom the merit of the Abbe Delille" (the 
Abbe Delille translated Paradise Lost) "makes me ad- 
mire, and with whom I have nevertheless still plenty 
of fault to find, why, I should like to know, are you 
scandalised that I have not enabled myself to read him? 
I don't understand the language in which he writes, and 
I don't much care to. If he is a poet one cannot put 
up with, even in the prose of the younger Racine, am I 
to blame for that ? If by force you mean beauty mani- 
festing itself with power, I maintain that the Abbe Delille 
has more force than Milton." That, to be sure, is a 
petulant outburst in a private letter ; it is not, like 
Coleridge's, a deliberate proposition in a printed phi- 
losophical essay. But is it possible to imagine a more 
perfect specimen of a sangrenu judgment? It is even 
worse than Coleridge's, because it is saugrenu with 
reasons. That, however, does not prevent Joubert from 
having been really a man of extraordinary ardour in the 
search for truth, and of extraordinary fineness in the 
perception of it ; and so was Coleridge. 

Joubert had around him in France an atmosphere of 
literary, philosophical, and religious opinion as alien to 
him as that in England was to Coleridge. This is what 
makes Joubert, too, so remarkable, and it is on this 
account that I begged the reader to remark his date. 
He was born in 1754; he died in 1824. He was thus 
in the fulness of his powers at the beginning of the 
present century, at the epoch of Napoleon's consulate. 



2 24 JOUBERT. 

The French criticism of that day — the criticism of La- 
harpe's successors, of Geoffroy and his colleagues in 
the Journal des Debats — had a dryness very unlike the 
telling vivacity of the early Edinburgh reviewers, their 
contemporaries, but a fundamental narrowness, a want 
of genuine insight, much on a par with theirs. Joubert, 
like Coleridge, has no respect for the dominant oracle ; 
he treats his Geoffroy with about as little deference 
as Coleridge treats his Jeffrey. "Geoffroy/' he says 
of an article in the Journal des Debats criticising Cha- 
teaubriand's Genie du Christianisme — " Geoffroy in this 
article begins by holding out his paw prettily enough ; 
but he ends by a volley of kicks, which lets the whole 
world see but too clearly the four iron shoes of the 
four-footed animal." There is, however, in France a 
sympathy with intellectual activity for its own sake, 
and for the sake of its inherent pleasurableness and 
beauty, keener than any which exists in England : and 
Joubert had more effect in Paris, — though his conversa- 
tion was his only weapon, and Coleridge wielded besides 
his conversation his pen, — than Coleridge had or could 
have in London. I mean, a more immediate, appreciable 
effect ; an effect not only upon the young and enthusi- 
astic, to whom the future belongs, but upon formed and 
important personages to whom the present belongs, and 
who are actually moving society. He owed this partly 
to his real advantages over Coleridge. If he had, as I 
have already said, less power and richness than his 
English parallel, he had more tact and penetration. He 
was more possible than Coleridge ; his doctrine was more 
intelligible than Coleridge's, more receivable. And yet 



JOUBERT. 225 

with Joubert, the striving after a consummate and at- 
tractive clearness of expression came from no mere 
frivolous dislike of labour and inability for going deep, 
but was a part of his native love of truth and perfection. 
The delight of his life he found in truth, and in the 
satisfaction which the enjoying of truth gives to the 
spirit; and he thought the truth was never really and 
worthily said, so long as the least cloud, clumsiness, and 
repulsiveness hung about the expression of it. 

Some of his best passages are those in which he 
upholds this doctrine. Even metaphysics he would not 
allow to remain difficult and abstract; so long as they 
spoke a professional jargon, the language of the schools, 
he maintained, — and who shall gainsay him ? — that me- 
taphysics were imperfect ; or, at any rate, had not yet 
reached their ideal perfection. 

" The true science of metaphysics," he says, " consists 
not in rendering abstract that which is sensible, but in 
rendering sensible that which is abstract ; apparent that 
which is hidden ; imaginable, if so it may be, that which 
is only intelligible; and intelligible, finally, that which 
an ordinary attention fails to seize." 

And therefore : — 

"Distrust, in books on metaphysics, words which have 
not been able to get currency in the world, and are 
only calculated to form a special language." 

Nor would he suffer common words to be employed 
in a special sense by the schools : — 

"Which is the best, if one wants to be useful and 
to be really understood, to get one's words in the world, 
or to get them in the schools. I maintain that the good 

Q 



226 JOUBERT. 

plan is to employ words in their popular sense rather 
than in their philosophical sense ; and the better plan 
still, to employ them in their natural sense rather than in 
their popular sense. By their natural sense, I mean the 
popular and universal acceptation of them brought to 
that which in this is essential and invariable. To prove 
a thing by definition proves nothing, if the definition is 
purely philosophical ; for such definitions only bind him 
who makes them. To prove a thing by definition, when 
the definition expresses the necessary, inevitable, and 
clear idea which the world at large attaches to the object, 
is, on the contrary, all in all ; because then what one does 
is simply to show people what they do really think, in 
spite of themselves and without knowing it. The rule 
that one is free to give to words what sense one will, and 
that the only thing needful is to be agreed upon the sense 
one gives them, is very well for the mere purposes of 
argumentation, and may be allowed in the schools where 
this sort of fencing is to be practised ; but in the sphere 
of the true-born and noble science of metaphysics, and 
in the genuine world of literature, it is good for nothing. 
One must never quit sight of realities, and one must 
employ one's expressions simply as media, — as glasses, 
through which one's thoughts can be best made evident. 
I know, by my own experience, how hard this rule is to 
follow ; but I judge of its importance by the failure of 
every system of metaphysics. Not one of them has 
succeeded; for the simple reason, that in every one 
ciphers have been constantly used instead of values, 
artificial ideas instead of native ideas, jargon instead of 
idiom." 



JOUBERT. 227 

I do not know whether the metaphysician will ever 
adopt Joubert's rules ; but I am sure that the man of 
letters, whenever he has to speak of metaphysics, will do 
well to adopt them. He, at any rate, must remember : — 

" It is by means of familiar words that style takes hold 
of the reader and gets possession of him. It is by means 
of these that great thoughts get currency and pass for 
true metal, like gold and silver which have had a recog- 
nised stamp put upon them. They beget confidence in 
the man who, in order to make his thoughts more clearly 
perceived, uses them ; for people feel that such an em- 
ployment of the language of common human life betokens 
a man who knows that life and its concerns, and who 
keeps himself in contact with them. Besides, these words 
make a style frank and easy. They show that an author 
has long made the thought or the feeling expressed his 
mental food ; that he has so assimilated them and fami- 
liarised them, that the most common expressions suffice 
him in order to express ideas which have become every- 
day ideas to him by the length of time they have been in 
his mind. And lastly, what one says in such words looks 
more true ; for, of all the words in use, none are so clear 
as those which we call common words ; and clearness is 
so eminently one of the characteristics of truth, that often 
it even passes for truth itself." 

These are not, in Joubert, mere counsels of rhetoric ; 
they come from his accurate sense of perfection, from his 
having clearly seized the fine and just idea that beauty 
and light are properties of truth, and that truth is in- 
completely exhibited if it is exhibited without beauty 
and light : — 

Q 2 



2 28 • JOUBERT. 

"Be profound with clear terms and not with obscure 
terms. What is difficult will at last become easy ; but as 
one goes deep into things, one must still keep a charm, 
and one must carry into these dark depths of thought, 
into which speculation has only recently penetrated, the 
pure and antique clearness of centuries less learned than 
ours, but with more light in them." 

And elsewhere he speaks of those "spirits, lovers of 
light, who, when they have an idea to put forth, brood 
long over it first, and wait patiently till it shines, as Buffon 
enjoined, when he defined genius to be the aptitude for 
patience ; spirits who know by experience that the driest 
matter and the dullest words hide within them the germ 
and spark of some brightness, like those fairy nuts in 
which were found diamonds if one broke the shell and 
was the right person ; spirits who maintain that, to see 
and exhibit things in beauty, is to see and show things 
as in their essence they really are, and not as they exist 
for the eye of the careless, who do not look beyond 
the outside ; spirits hard to satisfy, because of a keen- 
sightedness in them, which makes them discern but 
too clearly both the models to be followed and those to 
be shunned ; spirits active though meditative, who cannot 
rest except in solid truths, and whom only beauty can 
make happy; spirits far less concerned for glory than 
for perfection, who, because their art is long and life is 
short, often die without leaving a monument, having had 
their own inward sense of life and fruitfulness for their 
best reward." 

No doubt there is something a little too ethereal in all 
this, something which reminds one of Joubert's physical 



JOUBERT. 2 29 

want of body and substance ; no doubt, if a man wishes 
to be a great author, it is " to consider too curiously, to 
consider" as Joubert did; it is a mistake to spend so 
much of one's time in setting up one's ideal standard of 
perfection, and in contemplating it. Joubert himself 
knew this very well: "I cannot build a house for my 
ideas," said he; "I have tried to do without words, and 
words take their revenge on me by their difficulty." " If 
there is a man upon earth tormented by the cursed desire 
to get a whole book into a page, a whole page into a 
phrase, and this phrase into one word, — that man is my- 
self." "I can sow, but I cannot build." Joubert, how- 
ever, makes no claim to be a great author ; by renouncing 
all ambition to be this, by not trying to fit his ideas into 
a house, by making no compromise with words in spite 
of their difficulty, by being quite single-minded in his 
pursuit of perfection, perhaps he is enabled to get closer 
to the truth of the objects of his study, and to be of more 
service to us by setting ideals, than if he had composed 
a celebrated work. I doubt whether, in an elaborate 
work on the philosophy of religion, he would have got his 
ideas about religion to shine, to use his own expression, 
as they shine when he utters them in perfect freedom. 
Penetration in these matters is valueless without soul, and 
soul is valueless without penetration ; both of these are 
delicate qualities, and, even in those who have them, 
easily lost; the charm of Joubert is, that he has and 
keeps both : — 

" One should be fearful of being wrong in poetry when 
one thinks differently from the poets, and in religion when 
one thinks differently from the saints. 



- I 



230 JOUBERT. 

" There is a great difference between taking for idols 
Mahomet and Luther, and bowing down before Rousseau 
and Voltaire. People at any rate imagined they were 
obeying God when they followed Mahomet, and the 
Scriptures when they hearkened to Luther. And perhaps 
one ought not too much to disparage that inclination 
which leads mankind to put into the hands of those 
whom it thinks the friends of God the direction and 
government of its heart and mind. It is the subjection 
to irreligious spirits which alone is fatal, and, in the fullest 
sense of the word, depraving. 

" May I say it ? It is not hard to know God, provided 
one will not force oneself to define him. 

" Do not bring into the domain of reasoning that which 
belongs to our innermost feeling. State truths of senti- 
ment, and do not try to prove them. There is a danger 
in such proofs ; for in arguing it is necessary to treat that 
which is in question as something problematic : now that 
which we accustom ourselves to treat as problematic ends 
by appearing to us as really doubtful. In things that 
are visible and palpable, never prove what is believed 
already; in things that are certain and mysterious, — 
mysterious by their greatness and by their nature, — make 
people believe them, and do not prove them; in things 
that are matters of practice and duty, command, and do 
not explain. ' Fear God,' has made many men pious ; 
the proofs of the existence of God have made many men 
atheists. From the defence springs the attack; the 
advocate begets in his hearer a wish to pick holes ; and 
men are almost always led on, from the desire to con- 
tradict the doctor, to the desire to contradict the doc- 



JOUBERT. 23I 

trine. Make truth lovely, and do not try to arm her; 
mankind will then be far less inclined to contend 
with her. 

" Why is even a bad preacher almost always heard by 
the pious with pleasure ? Becattse he talks to them about 
what they love. But you who have to expound religion 
to the children of this world, you who have to speak to 
them of that which they once loved perhaps, or which 
they would be glad to love, — remember that they do not 
love it yet, and, to make them love it, take heed to speak 
with power. 

" You may do what you like, mankind will believe no 
one but God ; and he only can persuade mankind who 
believes that God has spoken to him. No one can give 
faith unless he has faith ; the persuaded persuade, as the 
indulgent disarm. 

"The only happy people in the world are the good 
man, the sage, and the saint; but the saint is happier 
than either of the others, so much is man by his nature 
formed for sanctity." 

The same delicacy and penetration which he here 
shows in speaking of the inward essence of religion, 
Joubert shows also in speaking of its outward form, and 
of its manifestation in the world : — 

" Piety is not a religion, though it is the soul of all 
religions. A man has not a religion simply by having 
pious inclinations, any more than he has a country simply 
by having philanthropy. A man has not a country until 
he is a citizen in a state, until he undertakes to follow 
and uphold certain laws, to obey certain magistrates, and 
to adopt certain ways of living and acting. 



232 JOUBERT. 

" Religion is neither a theology nor a theosophy ; it is 
more than all this ; it is a discipline, a law, a yoke, an 
indissoluble engagement." 

Who, again, has ever shown with more truth and 
beauty the good and imposing side of the wealth and 
splendour of the Catholic Church, than Joubert in the 
following passage : — 

" The pomps and magnificence with which the Church 
is reproached are in truth the result and the proof of her 
incomparable excellence. From whence, let me ask, 
have come this power of hers and these excessive riches, 
except from the enchantment into which she threw all 
the world ? Ravished with her beauty, millions of men 
from age to age kept loading her with gifts, bequests, 
cessions. She had the talent of making herself loved, 
and the talent of making men happy. It is that which 
wrought prodigies for her; it is from thence that she 
drew her power." 

"She had the talent of making herself feared" — one 
should add that too, in order to be perfectly just ; but 
Joubert, because he is a true child of light, can see that 
the wonderful success of the Catholic Church must have 
been due really to her good rather than to her bad 
qualities ; to her making herself loved rather than to her 
making herself feared. 

How striking and suggestive, again, is this remark on 
the Old and New Testaments : — 

" The Old Testament teaches the knowledge of good 
and evil ; the Gospel, on the other hand, seems written 
for the predestinated ; it is the book of innocence. The 
one is made for earth, the other seems made for heaven. 



JOUBERT. 233 

According as the one or the other of these books takes 
hold of a nation, what may be called the religious 
humours of nations differ." 

So the British and North-American Puritans are the 
children of the Old Testament, as Joachim of Flora and 
St. Francis are the children of the New. And does not 
the following maxim exactly fit the Church of England, 
of which Joubert certainly never thought when he Was 
writing it? "The austere sects excite the most enthu- 
siasm at first; but the temperate sects have always 
been the most durable." 

And these remarks on the Jansenists and Jesuits, 
interesting in themselves, are still more interesting be- 
cause they touch matters we cannot well know at first 
hand, and which Joubert, an impartial observer, had had 
the means of studying closely. We are apt to think of 
the Jansenists as having failed by reason of their merits ; 
Joubert shows us how far their failure was due to their 
defects : — 

" We ought to lay stress upon what is clear in Scrip- 
ture, and to pass quickly over what is obscure ; to light 
up what in Scripture is troubled, by what is serene in it; 
what puzzles and checks the reason, by what satisfies 
the reason. The Jansenists have done just the reverse. 
They lay stress upon what is uncertain, obscure, afflict- 
ing, and they pass lightly over all the rest ; they eclipse 
the luminous and consoling truths of Scripture, by putting 
between us and them its opaque and dismal truths. For 
example, ' Many are called ; ' there is a clear truth : 
1 Few are chosen ; ' there is an obscure truth. ' We are 
children of wrath ; ' there is a sombre, cloudy, terrifying 



234 JOUBERT. 

truth : ' We are all the children of God ; ' ' I came not to 
call the righteous, but sinners to repentance ; ' there are 
truths which are full of clearness, mildness, serenity, 
light. The Jansenists trouble our cheerfulness, and shed 
no cheering ray on our trouble. They are not, however, 
to be condemned for what they say, because what they 
say is true ; but they are to be condemned for what they 
fail to say, for that is true too, — truer, even, than the 
other; that is, its truth is easier for us to seize, fuller, 
rounder, and more complete. Theology, as the Jan- 
senists exhibit her, has but the half of her disk." 

Again : — 

" The Jansenists erect ' grace ' into a kind of fourth 
person of the Trinity. They are, without thinking or 
intending it, Quaternitarians. St. Paul and St. Augus- 
tine, too exclusively studied, have done all the mis- 
chief. Instead of ' grace,' say help, succour, a divine 
influence, a dew of heaven ; then one can come to a 
right understanding. The word 'grace' is a sort of 
talisman, all the baneful spell of which can be broken 
by translating it. The trick of personifying words is a 
fatal source of mischief in theology." 

Once more : — 

"The Jansenists tell men to love God; the Jesuits 
make men love him. The doctrine of these last is full 
of loosenesses, or, if you will, of errors ; still, — singular 
as it may seem, it is undeniable, — they are the better 
directors of souls. 

" The Jansenists have carried into religion more 
thought than the Jesuits, and they go deeper ; they are 
faster bound with its sacred bonds. They have in their 



JOUBERT. 235 

way of thinking an austerity which incessantly constrains 
the will to keep the path of duty \ all the habits of their 
understanding, in short, are more Christian. But they 
seem to love God without affection, and solely from 
reason, from duty, from justice. The Jesuits, on the 
other hand, seem to love him from pure inclination ; out 
of admiration, gratitude, tenderness ; for the pleasure 
of loving him, in short. In their books of devotion you 
find joy, because with the Jesuits nature and religion go 
hand in hand. In the books of the Jansenists there is 
a sadness and a moral constraint, because with the Jan- 
senists religion is for ever trying to put nature in bonds." 

The Jesuits have suffered, and deservedly suffered, 
plenty of discredit from what Joubert gently calls their 
"loosenesses;" let them have the merit of their amia- 
bility. 

The most characteristic thoughts one can quote from 
any writer are always his thoughts on matters like these ; 
but the maxims of Joubert on purely literary subjects 
also, have the same purged and subtle delicacy; they 
show the same sedulousness in him to preserve perfectly 
true the balance of his soul. Let me begin with this, 
which contains a truth too many people fail to perceive: — 

" Ignorance, which in matters of morals extenuates 
the crime, is itself, in matters of literature, a crime of 
the first order." 

And here is another sentence, worthy of Goethe, to 
clear the air at one's entrance into the region of litera- 
ture : — 

"With the fever of the senses, the delirium of the 
passions, the weakness of the spirit ; with the storms of 



236 JOUBERT. 

the passing time and with the great scourges of human 
life, — hunger, thirst, dishonour, diseases, and death, — 
authors may as long as they like go on making novels 
which shall harrow our hearts ; but the soul says all the 
while, ' You hurt me.' " 

And again : — 

"Fiction has no business to exist unless it is more 
beautiful than reality. Certainly the monstrosities of 
fiction may be found in the booksellers' shops ; you buy 
them there for a certain number of francs, and you talk 
of them for a certain number of days ; but they have no 
place in literature, because in literature the one aim of 
art is the beautiful. Once lose sight of that, and you 
have the mere frightful reality." 

That is just the right criticism to pass on these " mon- 
strosities :" they have no place in literature, and those 
who produce them are not really men of letters. One 
would think that this was enough to deter from such 
production any man of genuine ambition. But most of 
us, alas ! are what we must be, not what we ought to be, 
— not even what we know we ought to be. 

The following, of which the first part reminds one of 
Wordsworth's sonnet, " If thou indeed derive thy light 
from heaven," excellently defines the true salutary func- 
tion of literature, and the limits of this function : — 

" Whether one is an eagle or an ant, in the intellectual 
world, seems to me not to matter much ; the essential 
thing is to have one's place marked there, one's station 
assigned, and to belong decidedly to a regular and whole- 
some order. A small talent, if it keeps within its limits 
and rightly fulfils its task, may reach the goal just as well 



JOUBERT. 237 

as a greater one. To accustom mankind to pleasures 
which depend neither upon the bodily appetites nor upon 
money, by giving them a taste for the things of the 
mind, seems to me, in fact, the one proper fruit which 
nature has meant our literary productions to have. When 
they have other fruits, it is by accident, and, in general, 
not for good. Books which absorb our attention to such 
a degree that they rob us of all fancy for other books, 
are absolutely pernicious. In this way they only bring 
fresh crotchets and sects into the world ; they multiply 
the great variety of weights, rules, and measures already 
existing ; they are morally and politically a nuisance." 

Who can read these words and not think of the limiting 
effect exercised by certain works in certain spheres and 
for certain periods ; exercised even by the works of men 
of genius or virtue, — by the works of Rousseau, the 
works of Wesley, the works of Swedenborg ? And what 
is it which makes the Bible so admirable a book, to be 
the one book of those who can have only one, but the 
miscellaneous character of the contents of the Bible ? 

Joubert was all his life a passionate lover of Plato ; I 
hope other lovers of Plato will forgive me for saying that 
their adored object has never been more truly described 
than he is here : — 

" Plato shows us nothing, but he brings brightness with 
him \ he puts light into our eyes, and fills us with a clear- 
ness by which all objects afterwards become illuminated. 
He teaches us nothing ; but he prepares us, fashions us, 
and makes us ready to know all. Somehow or other, 
the habit of reading him augments in us the capacity 
for discerning and entertaining whatever fine truths may 



238 JOUBERT. 

afterwards present themselves. Like mountain-air, it 
sharpens our organs, and gives us an appetite for whole- 
some food." 

" Plato loses himself in the void" (he says again) ; 
"but one sees the play of his wings, one hears their 
rustle." And the conclusion is : " It is good to breathe 
his air, but not to live upon him." 

As a pendant to the criticism on Plato, this on the 
French moralist Nicole is excellent : — 

" Nicole is a Pascal without style. It is not what he 
says which is sublime, but what he thinks ; he rises, not 
by the natural elevation of his own spirit, but by that of 
his doctrines. One must not look to the form in him, 
but to the matter, which is exquisite. He ought to be 
read with a direct view of practice." 

English people have hardly ears to hear the praises of 
Bossuet, and the Bossuet of Joubert is Bossuet at his 
very best ; but this is a far truer Bossuet than the 
" declaimer" Bossuet of Lord Macaulay, himself a born 
rhetorician, if ever there was one : — 

" Bossuet employs all our idioms, as Homer employed 
all the dialects. The language of kings, of statesmen, 
and of warriors ; the language of the people and of the 
student, of the country and of the schools, of the sanc- 
tuary and of the courts of law; the old and the new, the 
trivial and the stately, the quiet and the resounding, — he 
turns all to his use ; and out of all this he makes a 
style, simple, grave, majestic. His ideas are, like his 
words, varied, — common and sublime together. Times 
and doctrines in all their multitude were ever before his 
spirit, as things and words in all their multitude were 



JOUBERT. 239 

ever before it. He is not so much a man as a human 
nature, with the temperance of a saint, the justice of 
a bishop, the prudence of a doctor, and the might of 
a great spirit." 

After this on Bossuet, I must quote a criticism on 
Racine, to show that Joubert did not indiscriminately 
worship all the French gods of the grand century : — 

" Those who find Racine enough for them are poor 
souls and poor wits ; they are souls and wits which have 
never got beyond the callow and boarding-school stage. 
Admirable, as no doubt he is, for his skill in having 
made poetical the most humdrum sentiments and the 
most middling sort of passions, he can yet stand us in 
stead of nobody but himself. He is a superior writer ; 
and, in literature, that at once puts a man on a pinnacle. 
But he is not an inimitable writer." 

And again : " The talent of Racine is in his works, 
but Racine himself is not there. That is why he himself 
became disgusted with them." " Of Racine, as of his 
ancients, the genius lay in taste. His elegance is per- 
fect, but it is not supreme, like that of Virgil." And, 
indeed, there is something supreme in an elegance which 
exercises such a fascination as Virgil's does ; which 
makes one return to his poems again and again, long 
after one thinks one has done with them ; which makes 
them one of those books that, to use Joubert's words, 
" lure the reader back to them, as the proverb says 
good wine lures back the wine-bibber." And the highest 
praise Joubert can at last find for Racine is this, that 
he is the Virgil of the ignorant ; — " Racine est le Virgile 
des ignorants." 



240 JOUBERT. 

Of Boileau, too, Joubert says : " Boileau is a powerful 
poet, but only in the world of half poetry." How true 
is that of Pope also ! And he adds : " Neither Boileau's 
poetry nor Racine's flows from the fountain-head." No 
Englishman, controverting the exaggerated French esti- 
mate of these poets, could desire to use fitter words. 

I will end with some remarks on Voltaire and Rousseau, 
remarks in which Joubert eminently shows his prime 
merit as a critic, — the soundness and completeness of 
his judgments. I mean that he has the faculty of 
judging with all the powers of his mind and soul at 
work together in due combination ; and how rare is 
this faculty ! how seldom is it exercised towards writers 
who so powerfully as Voltaire and Rousseau stimulate 
and call into activity a single side in us ! 

" Voltaire's wits came to their maturity twenty years 
sooner than the wits of other men, and remained in full 
vigour thirty years longer. The charm which our style 
in general gets from our ideas, his ideas get from his 
style. Voltaire is sometimes afflicted, sometimes strongly 
moved ; but serious he never is. His very graces have 
an effrontery about them. He had correctness of judg- 
ment, liveliness of imagination, nimble wits, quick taste, 
and a moral sense in ruins. He is the most debauched 
of spirits, and the worst of him is that one gets debauched 
along with him. If he had been a wise man, and had 
had the self-discipline of wisdom, beyond a doubt half 
his wit would have been gone ; it needed an atmosphere 
of licence in order to play freely. Those people who 
read him every day, create for themselves, by an 
invincible law, the necessity of liking him. But those 



JOUBERT. 241 

people who, having given up reading him, gaze steadily- 
down upon the influences which his spirit has shed 
abroad, find themselves in simple justice and duty 
compelled to detest him. It is impossible to be satisfied 
with him, and impossible not to be fascinated by him." 

The literary sense in us is apt to rebel against so 
severe a judgment on such a charmer of the literary 
sense as Voltaire, and perhaps we English are not very 
liable to catch Voltaire's vices, while of some of his 
merits we have signal need ; still, as the real definitive 
judgment on Voltaire, Joubert's is undoubtedly the true 
one. It is nearly identical with that of Goethe. Jou- 
bert's sentence on Rousseau is in some respects more 
favourable : — 

"That weight in the speaker (auctoritas) which the 
ancients talk of, is to be found in Bossuet more than in 
any other French author; Pascal, too, has it, and La 
Bruyere ; even Rousseau has something of it, but Voltaire 
not a particle. I can understand how a Rousseau — I 
mean a Rousseau cured of his faults — might at the 
present day do much good, and may even come to be 
greatly wanted; but under no circumstances can a 
Voltaire be of any use." 

The peculiar power of Rousseau's style has never been 
better hit off than in the following passage : — 

"Rousseau imparted, if I may so speak, bowels of 
feeling to the words he used (donna des entrailles a tons 
les mots), and poured into them such a charm, sweetness 
so penetrating, energy so puissant, that his writings have 
an effect upon the soul something like that of those 
illicit pleasures which steal away our taste and intoxicate 
our reason." r 



242 JOUBERT. 

The final judgment, however, is severe, and justly 
severe : — 

" Life without actions ; life entirely resolved into 
affections and half-sensual thoughts ; do-nothingness 
setting up for a virtue; cowardliness with voluptuous- 
ness j fierce pride with nullity underneath it ; the strut- 
ting phrase of the most sensual of vagabonds, who has 
made his system of philosophy and can give it eloquently 
forth : there is Rousseau ! A piety in which there is no 
religion ; a severity which brings corruption with it ; a 
dogmatism which serves to ruin all authority : there is 
Rousseau's philosophy ! To all tender, ardent, and ele- 
vated natures, I say : Only Rousseau can detach you 
from religion, and only true religion can cure you of 
Rousseau." 

I must yet find room, before I end, for one at least 
of Joubert's sayings on political matters ; here, too, the 
whole man shows himself; and here, too, the affinity 
with Coleridge is very remarkable. How true, how true 
in France especially, is this remark on the contrasting 
direction taken by the aspirations of the community in 
ancient and in modern states : — 

" The ancients were attached to their country by three 
things, — their temples, their tombs, and their forefathers. 
The two great bonds which united them to their govern- 
ment were the bonds of habit and antiquity. With the 
moderns, hope and the love of novelty have produced a 
total change. The ancients said our forefathers, we say 
posterity ; we do not, like them, love our pat)-ia, that is to 
say, the country and the laws of our fathers, rather we 
love the laws and the country of our children ; the charm 



JOUBERT. 243 

we are most sensible to is the charm of the future, and 
not the charm of the past." 

And how keen and true is this criticism on the 
changed sense of the word " liberty : " — 

"A great many words have changed their meaning. 
The word liberty, for example, had at bottom among the 
ancients the same meaning as the word dominion. I 
would be free meant, in the mouth of the ancient, I would 
take part in governing or administering the State; in the 
mouth of a modern it means, / would be i7idependent. 
The word liberty has with us a moral sense ; with them 
its sense was purely political." 

Joubert had lived through the French Revolution, and 
to the modern cry for liberty he was prone to answer : — 

" Let your cry be for free souls rather even than for 
free men. Moral liberty is the one vitally important 
liberty, the one liberty which is indispensable ; the other 
liberty is good and salutary only so far as it favours this. 
Subordination is in itself a better thing than indepen- 
dence. The one implies order and arrangement; the 
other implies only self-sufficiency with isolation. The 
one means harmony, the other a single tone ; the one is 
the whole, the other is but the part." 

" Liberty ! liberty ! " he cries again ; " in all things let 
us have justice, and then we shall have enough liberty." 

Let us have justice, and then we shall have enough liberty. 
The wise man will never refuse to echo those words ; 
but then, such is the imperfection of human govern- 
ments, that almost always, in order to get justice, one 
has first to secure liberty. 

I do not hold up Joubert as a very astonishing and 

R 2 



244 JOUBERT. 

powerful genius, but rather as a delightful and edifying 

genius. I have not cared to exhibit him as a sayer of 

brilliant epigrammatic things, such things as, " Notre vie 

est du vent tissu . . . les dettes abregent la vie . . . 

celui qui a de l'imagination sans erudition a des ailes et 

n'a pas de pieds " ( Our life is woven wind . . . debts take 

from life . . . the man of imagination without learning 

has wings and no feet), though for such sayings he is 

famous. In the first place, the French language is in 

itself so favourable a vehicle for such sayings, that the 

making them in it has the less merit ; at least half the 

merit ought to go, not to the maker of the saying, but to 

the French language. In the second place, the peculiar 

beauty of Joubert is not there ; it is not in what is 

exclusively intellectual, — it is in the union of soul with 

intellect, and in the delightful, satisfying result which this 

union produces. " Vivre, c'est penser et sentir son 

ame . . . le bonheur est de sentir son ame bonne . . . 

toute verite nue et crue n'a pas assez passe par l'ame 

... les homrnes ne sont justes qu'envers ceux qu'ils 

aiment " ( The essence of life lies in thinking and being 

conscious of one's soul . . . happiness is the sense of one's 

soul being good . . . if a truth is nude and crude, that 

is a proof it has not been steeped long enough in the soul; 

. . . man cannot even be just to his neighbour, unless he 

loves him) ; it is much rather in sayings like these that 

Joubert's best and innermost nature manifests itself. He 

is the most prepossessing and convincing of witnesses to 

the good of loving light. Because he sincerely loved 

light, and did not prefer to it any little private darkness 

of his own, he found light ; his eye was single, and there- 






JOUBERT. 245 

fore his whole body was full of light. And because he 
was full of light, he was also full of happiness. In spite 
of his infirmities, in spite of his sufferings, in spite of his 
obscurity, he was the happiest man alive ; his life was as 
charming as his thoughts. For certainly it is natural that 
the love of light, which is already, in some measure, the 
possession of light, should irradiate and beatify the whole 
life of him who has it. There is something unnatural 
and shocking where, as in the case of Coleridge, it does 
not. Joubert pains us by no such contradiction ; " the 
same penetration of spirit which made him such delight- 
ful company to his friends, served also to make him 
perfect in his own personal life, by enabling him always 
to perceive and do what was right ; " he loved and 
sought light till he became so habituated to it, so ac- 
customed to the joyful testimony of a good conscience, 
that, to use his own words, "he could no longer exist 
without this, and was obliged to live without reproach if 
he would live without misery." 

Joubert was not famous while he lived, and he will not 
be famous now that he is dead. But, before we pity him 
for this, let us be sure what we mean, in literature, by 
famous. There are the famous men of genius in litera- 
ture, — the Homers, Dantes, Shakspeares : of them we 
need not speak ; their praise is for ever and ever. Then 
there are the famous men of ability in literature : their 
praise is in their own generation. And what makes this 
difference? The work of the two orders of men is at 
the bottom the same, — a criticism of life. The end and 
aim of all literature, if one considers it attentively, is, in 
truth, nothing but that. But the criticism which the men 



246 JOUBERT. 

of genius pass upon human life is permanently acceptable 
to mankind ; the criticism which the men of ability pass 
upon human life is transitorily acceptable. Between 
Shakspeare's criticism of human life and Scribe's the dif- 
ference is there \ — the one is permanently acceptable, the 
other transitorily. Whence then, I repeat, this difference? 
It is that the acceptableness of Shakspeare's criticism 
depends upon its inherent truth : the acceptableness of 
Scribe's upon its suiting itself, by its subject-matter, ideas, 
mode of treatment, to the taste of the generation that 
hears it. But the taste and ideas of one generation are 
not those of the next. This next generation in its turn 
arrives ; — first its sharpshooters, its quick-witted, auda- 
cious light troops; then the elephantine main body. 
The imposing array of its predecessor it confidently 
assails, riddles it with bullets, passes over its body. It 
goes hard then with many once popular reputations, with 
many authorities once oracular: Only two kinds of 
authors are safe in the general havoc. The first kind 
are the great abounding fountains of truth, whose criti- 
cism of life is a source of illumination and joy to the 
whole human race for ever, — the Homers, the Shak- 
speares. These are the sacred personages, whom all civi- 
lised warfare respects. The second are those whom the 
out-skirmishers of the new generation, its forerunners, — 
quick-witted soldiers, as I have said, the select of the 
army, — recognise, though the bulk of their comrades 
behind might not, as of the same family and character 
with the sacred personages, exercising like them an im- 
mortal function, and like them inspiring a permanent 
interest. They snatch them up, and set them in a place 



JOUBERT. 247 

of shelter, where the on-coming multitude may not over- 
whelm them. These are the Jouberts. They will never, 
like the Shakspeares, command the homage of the mul- 
titude ; but they are safe ; the multitude will not trample 
them down. Except these two kinds, no author is safe. 
Let us consider, for example, Joubert's famous contem- 
porary, Lord Jeffrey. All his vivacity and accomplishment 
avail him nothing ; of the true critic he had in an eminent 
degree no quality, except one, — curiosity. Curiosity he 
had, but he had no gift for truth ; he cannot illuminate 
and rejoice us ; no intelligent out-skirmisher of the new 
generation cares about him, cares to put him in safety j 
at this moment we are all passing over his body. Let us 
consider a greater than Jeffrey, a critic whose reputation 
still stands firm, — will stand, many people think, for ever, 
— the great apostle of the Philistines, Lord Macaulay. 
Lord Macaulay was, as I have already said, a born rheto- 
rician • a splendid rhetorician doubtless, and, beyond that, 
an English rhetorician also, an honest rhetorician • still, 
beyond the apparent rhetorical truth of things he never 
could penetrate ; for their vital truth, for what the French 
call the vraie verity he had absolutely no organ ; there- 
fore his reputation, brilliant as it is, is not secure. Rhe- 
toric so good as his excites and gives pleasure ; but by 
pleasure alone you cannot permanently bind men's spirits 
to you. Truth illuminates and gives joy, and it is by the 
bond of joy, not of pleasure, that men's spirits are indis- 
solubly held. As Lord Macaulay's own generation dies 
out, as a new generation arrives, without those ideas and 
tendencies of its predecessor which Lord Macaulay so 
deeply shared and so happily satisfied, will he give the 



248 JOUBERT. 

same pleasure? and, if he ceases to give this, has he 
enough of light in him to make him safe ? Pleasure the 
new generation will get from its own novel ideas and 
tendencies ; but light is another and a rarer thing, and 
must be treasured wherever it can be found. Will 
Macaulay be saved, in the sweep and pressure of time, 
for his light's sake, as Johnson has already been saved by 
two generations, Joubert by one ? I think it very doubtful. 
But for a spirit of any delicacy and dignity, what a fate, 
if he could foresee it ! to be an oracle for one genera- 
tion, and then of little or no account for ever. How 
far better, to pass with scant notice through one's own 
generation, but to be singled out and preserved by the 
very iconoclasts of the next, then in their turn by those 
of the next, and so, like the lamp of life itself, to be 
handed on from one generation to another in safety ! 
This is Joubert's lot, and it is a very enviable one. The 
new men of the new generations, while they let the dust 
deepen on a thousand Laharpes, will say of him : " He 
lived in the Philistine's day, in a place and time when 
almost every idea current in literature had the mark of 
Dagon upon it, and not the mark of the children of light. 
Nay, the children of light were as yet hardly so much 
as heard of: the Canaanite was then in the land. 
Still, there were even then a few, who, nourished on 
some secret tradition, or illumined, perhaps, by a divine 
inspiration, kept aloof from the reigning superstitions, 
never bowed the knee to the gods of Canaan ; and one 
of these few was called Joubert" 



[ 2 49 



SPINOZA AND THE BIBLE. 

" By the sentence of the angels, by the decree of the 
saints, we anathematise, cut off, curse, and execrate 
Baruch Spinoza, in the presence of these sacred books 
with the six hundred and thirteen precepts which are 
written therein, with the anathema wherewith Joshua 
anathematised Jericho; with the cursing wherewith Elisha 
cursed the children ; and with all the cursings which are 
written in the Book of the Law : cursed be he by day, 
and cursed by night ; cursed when he lieth down, and 
cursed when he riseth up ; cursed when he goeth out, and 
cursed when he cometh in ; the Lord pardon him never ; 
the wrath and fury of the Lord burn upon this man, and 
bring upon him all the curses which are written in the 
Book of the Law. The Lord blot out his name under 
heaven. The Lord set him apart for destruction from 
all the tribes of Israel, with all the curses of the firma- 
ment which are written in the Book of this Law. . . . 
There shall no man speak to him, no man write to 
him, no man show him any kindness, no man stay under 
the same roof with him, no man come nigh him." 

With these amenities, the current compliments of 
theological parting, the Jews of the Portuguese synagogue 
at Amsterdam took in 1656 (and not in 1660 as has till 



250 SPINOZA AND THE BIBLE. 

now been commonly supposed) their leave of their erring 
brother, Baruch or Benedict Spinoza. They remained 
children of Israel, and he became a child of modern 
Europe. 

That was in 1656, and Spinoza died in 1677, at the 
early age of forty-four. Glory had not found him out. 
His short life — a life of unbroken diligence, kindliness, 
and purity — was passed in seclusion. But in spite of that 
seclusion, in spite of the shortness of his career, in spite 
of the hostility of the dispensers of renown in the 18th 
century, — of Voltaire's disparagement and Bayle's de- 
traction, — in spite of the repellent form which he has 
given to his principal work, in spite of the exterior sem- 
blance of a rigid dogmatism alien to the most essential 
tendencies of modern philosophy, in spite, finally, of the 
immense weight of disfavour cast upon him by the long- 
repeated charge of atheism, Spinoza's name has silently 
risen in importance, the man and his work have attracted 
a steadily increasing notice, and bid fair to become soon 
what they deserve to become, — in the history of modern 
philosophy, the central point of interest. An avowed 
translation of one of his works, — his Tractatus Thcologico- 
Politicus^ — has at last made its appearance in English. 
It is the principal work which Spinoza published in his 
lifetime ; his book on ethics, the work on which his fame 
rests, is posthumous. 

The English translator has not done his task well. Of 
the character of his version there can, I am afraid, be no 
doubt ; one such passage as the following is decisive : — 

" I confess that, while with them (the theologians) I 
have never been able sufficiently to admire the unfathomed 



SPINOZA AND THE BIBLE. 25 1 

mysteries of Scripture, I have still found them giving utter- 
ance to nothing but Aristotelian and Platonic speculations, 
artfully dressed up and cunningly accommodated to 
Holy Writ, lest the speakers should show themselves too 
plainly to belong to the sect of the Grecian heathens. 
Nor was it enough for these men to discourse with the 
Greeks ; they have further taken to raving with the Hebrew 
prophets" 

This professes to be a translation of these words of 
Spinoza : " Fateor, eos nunquam satis mirari potuisse 
Scripturae profundissima mysteria ; attamen praeter Aris- 
totelicorum vel Platonicorum speculationes nihil docuisse 
video, atque his, ne gentiles sectari viderentur, Scrip- 
turam accommodaverunt. Non satis his fuit cum Grascis 
insanire, sed prophetas cum iisdem deliravisse voluerunt." 
After one such specimen of a translator's force, the ex- 
perienced reader has a sort of instinct that he may as 
well close the book at once, with a smile or a sigh, 
according as he happens to be a follower of the weeping 
or of the laughing philosopher. If, in spite of this in- 
stinct, he persists in going on with the English version of 
the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, he will find many more 
such specimens. It is not, however, my intention to 
fill my space with these, or with strictures upon their 
author. I prefer to remark, that he renders a service to 
literary history by pointing out, in his preface, how " to 
Bayle may be traced the disfavour in which the name of 
Spinoza was so long held ; " that, in his observations on 
the system of the Church of England, he shows a laudable 
freedom from the prejudices of ordinary English Liberals 
of that advanced school to which he clearly belongs ; 



252 SPINOZA AND THE BIBLE. 

and lastly, that, though he manifests little familiarity with 
Latin, he seems to have considerable familiarity with 
philosophy, and to be well able to follow and compre- 
hend speculative reasoning. Let me advise him to unite 
his forces with those of some one who has that accurate 
knowledge of Latin which he himself has not, and then, 
perhaps, of that union a really good translation of 
Spinoza will be the result. And, having given him this 
advice, let me again turn, for a little, to the Tractatus 
Theologico-Politicus itself. 

This work, as I have already said, is a work on the 
interpretation of Scripture, — it treats of the Bible. What 
was it exactly which Spinoza thought about the Bible and 
its inspiration ? That will be, at the present moment, 
the central point of interest for the English readers of his 
Treatise. Now, it is to be observed, that just on this 
very point the Treatise, interesting and remarkable as it 
is, will fail to satisfy the reader. It is important to 
seize this notion quite firmly, and not to quit hold of it 
while one is reading Spinoza's work. The scope of that 
work is this. Spinoza sees that the life and practice of 
Christian nations professing the religion of the Bible. 
are not the due fruits of the religion of the Bible ; he sees 
only hatred, bitterness, and strife, where he might have 
expected to see love, joy, and peace in believing ; and 
he asks himself the reason of this. The reason is, he 
says, that these people misunderstand their Bible. Well, 
then, is his conclusion, I will write a Tractatus Theologico- 
Politicus. I will show these people, that, taking the Bible 
for granted, taking it to be all which it asserts itself to 
be, taking it to have all the authority which it claims, 



SPINOZA AND THE BIBLE. 253 

it is not what they imagine it to be, it does not say what 
they imagine it to say. I will show them what it really 
does say, and I will show them that they will do well to 
accept this real teaching of the Bible, instead of the 
phantom with which they have so long been cheated. 
I will show their governments that they will do well 
to remodel the national churches, to make of them 
institutions informed with the spirit of the true Bible, 
instead of institutions informed with the spirit of this 
false phantom. 

The comments of men, Spinoza said, had been foisted 
into the Christian religion ; the pure teaching of God 
had been lost sight of. He determined, therefore, to 
go again to the Bible, to read it over and over with a 
perfectly unprejudiced mind, and to accept nothing as 
its teaching which it did not clearly teach. He began 
by constructing a method, or set of conditions indis- 
pensable for the adequate interpretation of Scripture. 
These conditions are such, he points out, that a perfectly 
adequate interpretation of Scripture is now impossible. 
For example, to understand any prophet thoroughly, we 
ought to know the life, character, and pursuits of that 
prophet, under what circumstances his book was com- 
posed, and in what state and through what hands it 
has come down to us ; and, in general, most of this we 
cannot now know. Still, the main sense of the Books 
of Scripture may be clearly seized by us. Himself a 
Jew with all the learning of his nation, and a man of 
the highest natural powers, Spinoza had in the difficult 
task of seizing this sense every aid which special know- 
ledge or pre-eminent faculties could supply. 



254 SPINOZA AND THE BIBLE. 

In what then, he asks, does Scripture, interpreted by 
its own aid, and not by the aid of Rabbinical traditions 
or Greek philosophy, allege its own divinity to consist ? 
In a revelation given by God to the prophets. Now all 
knowledge is a divine revelation; but prophecy, as 
represented in Scripture, is one of which the laws of 
human nature, considered in themselves alone, cannot 
be the cause. Therefore nothing must be asserted about 
it, except what is clearly declared by the prophets them- 
selves ; for they are our only source of knowledge on a 
matter which does not fall within the scope of our 
ordinary knowing faculties. But ignorant people, not ~~ 
knowing the Hebrew genius and phraseology, and not 
attending to the circumstances of the speaker, often 
imagine the prophets to assert things which they 
do not. 

The prophets clearly declare themselves to have 
received the revelation of God through the means of 
words and images ; — not, as Christ, through immediate 
communication of the mind with the mind of God. 
Therefore the prophets excelled other men by the power 
and vividness of their representing and imagining faculty, 
not by the perfection of their mind. This is why they 
perceived almost everything through figures, and express 
themselves so variously, and so improperly, concerning 
the nature of God. Moses imagined that God could be 
seen, and attributed to him the passions of anger and 
jealousy; Micaiah imagined him sitting on a throne, 
with the host of heaven on his right and left hand; 
Daniel as an old man, with a white garment and white 
hair ; Ezekiel as a fire ; the disciples of Christ thought 



SPINOZA AND THE BIBLE. 255 

they saw the Spirit of God in the form of a dove ; the 
apostles in the form of fiery tongues. 

Whence, then, could the prophets be certain of the 
truth of a revelation which they received through the 
imagination, and not by a mental process? — for only 
an idea can carry the sense of its own certainty along 
with it, not an imagination. To make them certain of 
the truth of what was revealed to them, a'reasoning 
process came in ; they had to rely on the testimony of 
a sign ; and (above all) on the testimony of their own 
conscience, that they were good men, and spoke for 
God's sake. Either testimony was incomplete without 
the other. Even the good prophet needed for his 
message the confirmation of a sign ; but the bad 
prophet, the utterer of an immoral doctrine, had no 
certainty for his doctrine, no truth in it, even though 
he confirmed it by a sign. The testimony of a good 
conscience was, therefore, the prophet's grand source of 
certitude. Even this, however, was only a moral certi- 
tude, not a mathematical ; for no man can be perfectly 
sure of his own goodness. 

The power of imagining, the power of feeling what 
goodness is, and the habit of practising goodness, were 
therefore the sole essential qualifications of a true 
prophet. But for the purpose of the message, the 
revelation, which God designed him to convey, these 
qualifications were enough. The sum and substance of 
this revelation was simply : Believe in God, and lead a 
good life. To be the organ of this revelation, did not 
make a man more learned; it left his scientific know- 
ledge as it found it. This explains the contradictory 



256 SPINOZA AND THE BIBLE. 

and speculatively false opinions about God, and the 
laws of nature, which the patriarchs, the prophets, the 
apostles entertained. Abraham and the patriarchs, knew 
God only as El Sadai, the power which gives to every 
man that which suffices him; Moses knew him as 
Jehovah, a self-existent being, but imagined him with 
the passions of a man. Samuel imagined that God 
could not repent of his sentences ; Jeremiah, that he 
could. Joshua, on a day of great victory, the ground 
being white with hail, seeing the daylight last longer 
than usual, and imaginatively seizing this as a special 
sign of the help divinely promised to him, declared that 
the sun was standing still. To be obeyers of God them- 
selves, and inspired leaders of others to obedience and 
good life, did not make Abraham and Moses metaphy- 
sicians, or Joshua a natural philosopher. His revela- 
tion no more changed the speculative opinions of each 
prophet, than it changed his temperament or style. The 
wrathful Elisha required the natural sedative of music, 
before he could be the messenger of good fortune to 
Jehoram. The high-bred Isaiah and Nahum have the 
style proper to their condition, and the rustic Ezekiel 
and Amos the style proper to theirs. We are not there- 
fore bound to pay heed to the speculative opinions of 
this or that prophet, for in uttering these he spoke as 
a mere man : only in exhorting his hearers to obey God 
and lead a good life was he the organ of a divine re- 
velation. 

To know and love God is the highest blessedness of 
man, and of all men alike ; to this all mankind are called, 
and not any one nation in particular. The divine law, 



SPINOZA AND THE BIBLE. 257 

properly so named, is the method of life for attaining 
this height of human blessedness : this law is universal, 
written in the heart, and one for all mankind. Human 
law is the method of life for attaining and preserving 
temporal security and prosperity : this law is dictated by 
a lawgiver, and every nation has its own. In the case 
of the Jews, this law was dictated, by revelation, through 
the prophets ; its fundamental precept was to obey God 
and to keep his commandments, and it is therefore, in 
a secondary sense, called divine ; but it was, neverthe- 
less, framed in respect of temporal things only. Even 
the truly moral and divine precept of this law, to practise 
for God's sake justice and mercy towards one's neigh- 
bour, meant for the Hebrew of the Old Testament his 
Hebrew neighbour only, and had respect to the concord 
and stability of the Hebrew commonwealth. The Jews 
were to obey God and to keep his commandments, that 
they might continue long in the land given to them, and 
that it might be well with them there. Their election 
was a temporal one, and lasted only so long as their 
State. It is now over ; and the only election the Jews 
now have is that of the pious, the remnant, which takes 
place, and has always taken place, in every other nation 
also. Scripture itself teaches that there is a universal 
divine law, that this is common to all nations alike, 
and is the law which truly confers eternal blessedness. 
Solomon, the wisest of the Jews, knew this law, as the 
few wisest men in all nations have ever known it ; but 
for the mass of the Jews, as for the mass of mankind 
everywhere, this law was hidden, and they had no notion 
of its moral action, its vera vita which conducts to 

s 



258 SPINOZA AND THE BIBLE. 

eternal blessedness, except so far as this action was; 
enjoined upon them by the prescriptions of their tem- 
poral law. When the ruin of their State brought with 
it the ruin of their temporal law, they would have lost 
altogether their only clue to eternal blessedness. 

Christ came when that fabric of the Jewish State, for 
the sake of which the Jewish law existed, was about to 
fall j and he proclaimed the universal divine law. A cer- 
tain moral action is prescribed by this law, as a certain 
moral action was prescribed by the Jewish law : but he who 
truly conceives the universal divine law conceives God's 
decrees adequately as eternal truths, and for him moral 
action has liberty and self-knowledge ; while the prophets 
of the Jewish law inadequately conceived God's decrees 
as mere rules and commands, and for them moral action 
had no liberty and no self-knowledge. Christ, who beheld 
the decrees of God as God himself beholds them, — as 
eternal truths, — proclaimed the love of God arid the love 
of our neighbour as commands, only because of the ignor- 
ance of the multitude : to those to whom it was " given 
to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God," he 
announced them, as he himself perceived them, as 
eternal truths. And the apostles, like Christ, spoke to 
many of their hearers "as unto carnal not spiritual;" 
presented to them, that is, the love of God and their 
neighbour as a divine command authenticated by the life 
and death of Christ, not as an eternal idea of reason 
carrying its own warrant along with it. The presenta- 
tion of it as this latter their hearers " were not able to 
bear." The apostles, moreover, though they preached 
and confirmed their doctrine by signs as prophets, wrote 



SPINOZA AND THE BIBLE. 259 

their Epistles, not as prophets, but as doctors and 
reasoners. The essentials of their doctrine, indeed, they 
took not from reason, but, like the prophets, from fact and 
revelation ; they preached belief in God and goodness of 
life as a catholic religion existing by virtue of the passion 
of Christ, as the prophets had preached belief in God and 
goodness of life as a national religion existing by virtue of 
the Mosaic covenant : but while the prophets announced 
their message in a form purely dogmatical, the apostles 
developed theirs with the forms of reasoning and argu- 
mentation, according to each apostle's ability and way of 
thinking, and as they might best commend their message 
to their hearers ; and for their reasonings they themselves 
claim no divine authority, submitting them to the judg- 
ment of their hearers. Thus each apostle built essential 
religion on a non-essential foundation of his own, and, 
as St. Paul says, avoided building on the foundations of 
another apostle, which might be quite different from his 
own. Hence the discrepancies between the doctrine of 
one apostle and another, — between that of St. Paul, for 
example, and that of St. James ; but these discrepancies 
are in the non-essentials not given to them by revelation, 
and not in essentials. Human churches, seizing these 
discrepant non-essentials as essentials, one maintaining 
one of them, another another, have filled the world with I 
unprofitable disputes, have "turned the Church into 
an academy, and religion into a science, or rather a 
wrangling," and have fallen into endless schism. 

What, then, are the essentials of religion according 
both to the Old and to the New Testament? Very few 
and very simple. The precept to love God and our 

s 2 



s\ 



260 SPINOZA AND THE BIBLE. 

neighbour. The precepts of the first chapter of Isaiah : 
" Wash you, make you clean ; put away the evil of your 
doings from before mine eyes ; cease to do evil ; learn to 
do well ; seek judgment ; relieve the oppressed ; judge 
the fatherless ; plead for the widow." The precepts of 
the Sermon on the Mount, which add to the foregoing 
the injunction that we should cease to do evil and learn 
to do well, not to our brethren and fellow-citizens only, 
but to all mankind. It is by following these precepts 
that belief in God is to be shown : if we believe in him, 
we shall keep his commandment ; and this is his com- 
mandment, that we love one another. It is because it 
contains these precepts that the Bible is properly called 
the Word of God, in spite of its containing much that 
is mere history, and, like all history, sometimes true, 
sometimes false ; in spite of its containing much that 
is mere reasoning, and, like all reasoning, sometimes 
sound, sometimes hollow. These precepts are also the 
precepts of the universal divine law written in our 
hearts ; and it is only by this that the divinity of Scrip- 
ture is established ; — by its containing, namely, precepts 
identical with those of this inly-written and self-proving 
— - law. This law was in the world, as St. John says, before 
the doctrine of Moses or the doctrine of Christ. And 
what need was there, then, for these doctrines ? Because 
the world at large " knew not" this original divine law, 
in which precepts are ideas, and the belief in God the 
knowledge and contemplation of him. Reason gives 
us this law, reason tells us that it leads to eternal 
blessedness, and that those who follow it have no need 
of any other. But reason could not have told us that 



SPINOZA AND THE BIBLE. 26 1 

the moral action of the universal divine law, — followed 
not from a sense of its intrinsic goodness, truth, and 
necessity, but simply in proof of obedience (for both the 
Old and New Testament are but one long discipline of 
obedience), simply because it is so commanded by Moses 
in virtue of the covenant, simply because it is so com- 
manded by Christ in virtue of his life and passion, — can 
lead to eternal blessedness, which means, for reason, 
eternal knowledge. Reason could not have told us this, 
and this is what the Bible tells us. This is that " thing 
which had been kept secret since the foundation of the 
world." It is thus that by means of the foolishness of 
the world God confounds the wise, and with things that 
are not brings to nought things that are. Of_£he truth_of 
the promise thus made to obedience without knowledge, 
we can have no mathematical certainty ; for we can have 
a mathematical certainty only of things deduced by 
reason from elements which she in herself possesses. 
But we can have a moral certainty of it ; a certainty such 
as the prophets had themselves, arising out of the good- 
ness and pureness of those to whom this revelation has 
been made, and rendered possible for us by its contra- 
dicting no principles of reason. It is a great comfort to 
believe it ; because "as it is only the very small minority 1 
who can pursue a virtuous life by the sole guidance of 
reason, we should, unless we had this testimony of Scrip- I 
ture, be in doubt respecting the salvation of nearly the 
whole human race." 

It follows from this that philosophy has her own 
independent sphere, and theology hers, and that neither 
has the right to invade and try to subdue the other. 



/ / 



262 SPINOZA AND THE BIBLE. 

Theology demands perfect obedience, philosophy perfect 
knowledge : the obedience demanded by theology and 
the knowledge demanded by philosophy are alike saving. 
As speculative opinions about God, theology requires 
only such as are indispensable to the reality of this 
obedience ; the belief that God is, that he is a re warder 
of them that seek him, and that the proof of seeking 
him is a good life. These are the fundamentals^ of 
faith, and they are so clear and simple that none of 
the inaccuracies provable in the Bible narrative the least 
affect them, and they have indubitably come to us 
uncorrupted. He who holds them may make, as the 
patriarchs and prophets did, other speculations about 
God most erroneous, and yet their faith is complete and 
saving. Nay, beyond these fundamentals, speculative 
opinions are pious or impious, not as they are true or 
false, but as they confirm or shake the believer in the 
practice of obedience. The truest speculative opinion 
about the nature of God is impious if it makes its 
holder rebellious ; the falsest speculative opinion is pious 
if it makes him obedient. Governments should never - 
render themselves the tools of ecclesiastical ambition by 
promulgating as fundamentals of the national Church's 
faith more than these, and should concede the fullest 
liberty of speculation. 

But the multitude, which respects only what astonishes, 
terrifies, and overwhelms it, by no means takes this 
simple view of its own religion. To the multitude, 
religion seems imposing only when it is subversive of 
reason, confirmed by miracles, conveyed in documents 
materially sacred and infallible, and dooming to damna- 



SPINOZA AND THE BIBLE. 263 

tion all without its pale. But this religion of the mul- 
titude is not the religion which a true interpretation of 
Scripture finds in Scripture. Reason tells us that a 
miracle, — understanding by a miracle a breach of the 
laws of nature, — is impossible, and that to think it 
possible is to dishonour God ; for the laws of nature are 
the laws of Cod, and to say that God violates the laws 
of nature is to say that he violates his own nature. 
Reason sees, too, that miracles can never attain their 
professed object, — that of bringing us to a higher know- 
ledge of God; since our knowledge of God is raised 
only by perfecting and clearing our conceptions, and the 
alleged design of miracles is to baffle them. But neither 
does Scripture anywhere assert, as a general truth, that 
miracles are possible. Indeed, it asserts the contrary; 
for Jeremiah declares that nature follows an invariable 
order. Scripture, however, like Nature herself, does not 
lay down speculative propositions (Scriptura deftnitiones 
non tradit, ut nee etiam natura). It relates matters in 
such an order and with such phraseology as a speaker 
(often not perfectly instructed himself) who jwanted to 
impress his hearers with a lively sense of God's greatness 
and goodness would naturally employ; as Moses, for •- 
instance, relates to the Israelites the passage of the 
Red Sea without any mention of the east wind which 
attended it, and which is brought accidentally to our 
knowledge in another place. So that to know exactly 
what Scripture means in the relation of each seeming 
miracle, we ought to know (besides the tropes and 
phrases of the Hebrew language) the circumstances, 
and also, — since every one is swayed in his manner of 



264 SPINOZA AND THE BIBLE. 

presenting facts by his own preconceived opinions, and 
we have seen what those of the prophets were, — the 
preconceived opinions of each speaker. But this mode 
of interpreting Scripture is fatal to the vulgar notion of 
its verbal inspiration, of a sanctity and absolute truth 
in all the words and sentences of which it is composed. 
This vulgar notion is, indeed, a palpable error. It is 
demonstrable from the internal testimony of the Scrip- 
tures themselves, that the books from the first of the 
Pentateuch to the last of Kings were put together, 
after the first destruction of Jerusalem, by a compiler 
(probably Ezra) who designed to relate the history of 
the Jewish people from its origin to that destruction ; it 
is demonstrable, moreover, that the compiler did not 
put his last hand to the work, but left it with its 
extracts from various and conflicting sources sometimes 
unreconciled, left it with errors of text and unsettled 
readings. The prophetic books are mere fragments of 
the prophets, collected by the Rabbins where they 
could find them, and ' inserted in the Canon according 
to their discretion. They, at first, proposed to admit 
neither the Book of Proverbs nor the Book of Eccle- 
siastes into the Canon, and only admitted them because 
there were found in them passages which commended 
the law of Moses. Ezekiel also they had determined 
to exclude ; but one of their number remodelled him, 
so as to procure his admission. The Books of Ezra, 
Nehemiah, Esther, and Daniel are the work of a single 
author, and were not written till after Judas Maccabeus 
had restored the worship of the Temple. The Book of 
Psalms was collected and arranged at the same time. 



SPINOZA AND THE BIBLE. 265 

Before this time, there was no Canon of the sacred 
writings, and the great synagogue, by which the Canon 
was fixed, was first convened after the Macedonian 
conquest of Asia. Of that synagogue none of the 
prophets were members ; the learned men who com- 
posed it were guided by their own fallible judgment. 
In like manner the uninspired judgment of human 
councils determined the Canon of the New Testament. 

Such, reduced to the briefest and plainest terms pos- 
sible, stripped of the developments and proofs with 
which he delivers it, and divested of the metaphysical 
language in which much of it is clothed by him, is the 
doctrine of Spinoza's treatise on the interpretation of 
Scripture. By the whole scope and drift of its argument, 
by the spirit in which the subject is throughout treated, \ 
his work undeniably is most interesting and stimulating 
to the general culture of Europe. There are alleged 
contradictions in Scripture ; and the question which the 
general culture of Europe, informed of this, asks with real 
interest is : What then ? Spinoza addresses himself to this 
question. All secondary points of criticism he touches 
with the utmost possible brevity. He points out that 
Moses could never have written : " And the Canaanite was 
then in the land," because the Canaanite was in the land 
still at the death of Moses. He points out that Moses 
could never have written: " There arose not a prophet 
since in Israel like unto Moses." He points out how such 
a passage as, " These are the kings that reigned in Edom 
before there reigned any king over the childre?i of Israel" 
clearly indicates an author writing not before the times 



266 SPINOZA AND THE BIBLE. 

of the Kings." He points out how the account of Og's 
iron bedstead : " Only Og the king of Bashan remained 
of the remnant of giants ; behold, his bedstead was a 
bedstead of iron; is it not in Rabbath of the children 
of Ammon?" — probably indicates an author writing after 
David had taken Rabbath, and found there " abundance 
of spoil," amongst it this iron bedstead, the gigantic 
relic of another age. He points out how the language 
of this passage, and of such a passage as that in the 
Book of Samuel : " Beforetime in Israel, when a man 
went to inquire of God, thus he spake: Come and let 
us go to the seer ; for he that is now called prophet was 
aforetime called seer" — is certainly the language of a 
writer describing the events of a long-past age, and not 
the language of a contemporary. But he devotes to all 
this no more space than is absolutely necessary. He 
apologises for delaying over such matters so long : non 
est cur circa hcec diu detinear — nolo t&diosa lectio?ie lector em 
detinere. For him the interesting question is, not 
whether the fanatical devotee of the letter is to con- 
tinue, for a longer or for a shorter time, to believe that 
Moses sate in the land of Moab writing the description 
of his own death, but what he is to believe when he 
does not believe this. Is he to take for the guidance of 
his life a great gloss put upon the Bible by theologians, 
who, " not content with going mad themselves with Plato 
and Aristotle, want to make Christ and the prophets go 
mad with them too," — or the Bible itself? Is he to be 
presented by his national church with metaphysical 
formularies for his creed, or with the real fundamentals 
of Christianity? If with the former, religion will never 



SPINOZA AND THE BIBLE. 267 

produce its due fruits. A few elect will still be saved ; 
but the vast majority of mankind will remain without 
grace and without good works, hateful and hating one 
another. Therefore he calls urgently upon governments 
to make the national church what it should be. This 
is the conclusion of the whole matter for him ; a fervent 
appeal to the State, to save us from the untoward genera- 
tion of metaphysical Article-makers. And therefore, 
anticipating Mr. Gladstone, he called his book "The 
Church in its Relations with the State." 

Such is really the scope of Spinoza's work. He pursues 
a great object, and pursues it with signal ability ; but it is 
important to observe that he does not give us his own 
opinion about the Bible's fundamental character. He 
takes the Bible as it stands, as he might take the pheno- 
mena of nature, and he discusses it as he finds it. Revela- 
tion differs from natural knowledge, he says, not by being 
more divine or more certain than natural knowledge, but 
by being conveyed in a different way ; it differs from it 
because it is a knowledge " of which the laws of human 
nature considered in themselves alone cannot be the 
cause." What is really its cause, he says, we need not 
here inquire (veruni nee nobis jam opus est propheticce 
cognitionis causam scire), for we take Scripture, which 
contains this revelation, as it stands, and do not ask 
how it arose {documentorum cansas nihil curamus). 

Proceeding on this principle, Spinoza leaves the at- 
tentive reader somewhat baffled and disappointed, clear 
as is his way of treating his subject, and remarkable 
as are the conclusions with which he presents us. He 
starts, we feel, from what is to him a hypothesis, and we 



268 SPINOZA AND THE BIBLE. 

want to know what he really thinks about this hypothesis. 
His greatest novelties are all within limits fixed for him 
by this hypothesis. He says that the voice which called 
Samuel was an imaginary voice ; he says that the waters 
of the Red Sea retreated before a strong wind ; he says 
that the Shunammite's son was revived by the natural 
heat of Elisha's body; he says that the rainbow which 
was made a sign to Noah appeared in the ordinary 
course of nature. Scripture itself, rightly interpreted, 
says, he affirms, all this. But he asserts that the voice 
which uttered the commandments on Mount Sinai was 
a real voice, a vera vox. He says, indeed, that this 
voice could not really give to the Israelites that proof 
which they imagined it gave^to them of the existence of 
God, and that God on Sinai was dealing with the Israel- 
ites only according to their imperfect knowledge. Still 
he asserts the voice to have been a real one ; and for 
this reason, that we do violence to Scripture if we do 
not admit it to have been a real one {nisi Scripture? vi??i 
inferre velimus, ottinino concede?idum est, Israelitas veram 
vocem audivisse). The attentive reader wants to know 
what Spinoza himself thought about this vera vox and 
its possibility; he is much more interested in knowing 
this, than in knowing what Spinoza considered Scripture 
to affirm about the matter. 

The feeling of perplexity thus caused is not diminished 
by the language of the chapter on miracles. In this 
chapter Spinoza broadly affirms a miracle to be an 
impossibility. But he himself contrasts the method of 
demonstration a priori, by which he claims to have 
established this proposition, with the method which 



SPINOZA AND THE BIBLE. 269 

he has pursued in treating of prophetic revelation. 
" This revelation," he says, " is a matter out of human 
reach, and therefore I was bound to take it as I found 
it." Monere volo, me alia prorsus methodo circa miracula 
.processisse, guam circa prophetiam . . . quod etiam consulto 
feci quia de prophetia, quandoquidem ipsa captum huma- 
num superat et qucestio mere theologica est, nihil qffirmare, 
neque etiam scire poteram in quo ipsa potissimum co?tstiterit, 
nisi ex fundamentis revelatis. The reader feels that 
Spinoza, proceeding on a hypothesis, has presented him 
with the assertion of a miracle, and afterwards, proceed- 
ing d priori, has presented him with the assertion that a 
miracle is impossible. He feels that Spinoza does not 
adequately reconcile these two assertions by declaring 
that any event really miraculous, if found recorded in 
Scripture, must be " a spurious addition made to Scrip- 
ture by sacrilegious men." Is, then, he asks, the vera vox 
of Mount Sinai in Spinoza's opinion a spurious addition 
made to Scripture by sacrilegious men ; or, if not, how 
is it not miraculous ? 

Spinoza, in his own mind, regarded the Bible as a 
vast collection of miscellaneous documents, many of 
them quite disparate and not at all to be harmonised 
with others ; documents of unequal value and of varying 
applicability, some of them conveying ideas salutary for 
one time, others for another. But in the Tractatus 
Theologico-Politicus he by no means always deals in this 
free spirit with the Bible. Sometimes he chooses to deal 
with it in the spirit of the veriest worshipper of the letter ; 
sometimes he chooses to treat the Bible as if all its parts 
were (so to speak) equipollent ; to snatch an isolated 



270 SPINOZA AND THE BIBLE. 

text which suits his purpose, without caring whether it is 
annulled by the context, by the general drift of Scripture, 
or by other passages of more weight and authority. The 
great critic thus becomes voluntarily as uncritical as 
Exeter Hall. The epicurean Solomon, whose Ecdesiastes 
the Hebrew doctors, even after they had received it into 
the canon, forbade the young and weak-minded among 
their community to read, Spinoza quotes as of the same 
authority with the severe Moses ; he uses promiscuously, 
as documents of identical force, without discriminating 
between their essentially different character, the softened 
cosmopolitan teaching of the prophets of the captivity 
and the rigid national reaching of the instructors of 
Israel's youth. He is capable of extracting, from a 
chance expression of Jeremiah, the assertion of a specu- 
lative idea which Jeremiah certainly never entertained, 
and from which he would have recoiled in dismay, — the 
idea, namely, that miracles are impossible ; just as the 
ordinary Englishman can extract from God's words to 
Noah, Be fruitful and multiply, an exhortation to him- 
self to have a large family. Spinoza, I repeat, knew 
perfectly well what this verbal mode of dealing with the 
Bible was worth : but he sometimes uses it because of 
the hypothesis from which he set out; because of his 
having agreed "to take Scripture as it stands, and not 
to ask how it arose." 

No' doubt the sagacity of Spinoza's rules for Biblical 
interpretation, the power of his analysis of the contents of 
the Bible, the interest of his reflections on Jewish history, 
are, in spite of this, very great, and have an absolute 
worth of their own, independent of the silence or ambi- 



SPINOZA AND THE BIBLE. 27 I 

guity of their author upon a point of cardinal importance. 
Few candid people will read his rules of interpretation 
without exclaiming that they are the very dictates of good 
sense, that they have always believed in them ; and with- 
out adding, after a moment's reflection, that they have 
passed their lives in violating them. And what can be 
more interesting, than to find that perhaps the main cause 
of the decay of the Jewish polity was one of which from 
our English Bible, which entirely mistranslates the 26th 
verse of the 20th chapter of Ezekiel, we hear nothing, — 
the perpetual reproach of impurity and rejection cast 
upon the mass of the Hebrew nation by the exclusive 
priesthood of the tribe of Levi? What can be more 
suggestive, after Mr. Mill and Dr. Stanley have been 
telling us how great an element of strength to the 
Hebrew nation was the institution of prophets, than to 
hear from the ablest of Hebrews how this institution 
seems to him to have been to his nation one of her main 
elements of weakness ? No intelligent man can read the 
Tractatus Theologico-Politiais without being profoundly 
instructed by it : but neither can he read it without feel- 
ing that, as a speculative work, it is, to use a French 
military expression, i?i the air ; that, in a certain sense, 
it is in want of a base and in want of supports ; that this 
base and these supports are, at any rate, not to be found 
in the work itself, and, if they exist, must be sought for 
in other works of the author. 

The genuine speculative opinions of Spinoza, which 
the Iradatus Theologico-Politiais but imperfectly reveals, 
may in his Ethics and in his Letters be found set forth 
clearly. It is, however, the business of criticism to deal 



272 SPINOZA AND THE BIBLE. 

with every independent work as with an independent 
whole, and, instead of establishing between the Trac- 
tates Theologico-Politicus and the Ethics of Spinoza a 
relation which Spinoza himself has not established, — to 
seize, in dealing with the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, 
the important fact that this work has its source, not in 
the axioms and definitions of the Ethics, but in a hypo- 
thesis. The Ethics are "not yet translated into English, - 
and I have not here to speak of them. Then will be 
the right time for criticism to try and seize the special 
character and tendencies of that remarkable work, when 
it is dealing with it directly. The criticism of the Ethics 
is far too serious a task to be undertaken incidentally, 
and merely as a supplement to the criticism of the 
Tractatus Theologico-Politicus. Nevertheless, on certain 
governing ideas of Spinoza, which receive their syste- 
matic expression, indeed, in the Ethics, and on which the 
Tractatus T/ieologico-Politicus is not formally based, but 
which are yet never absent from Spinoza's mind in the 
composition of any work, which breathe through all his 
works, and fill them with a peculiar effect and power, I 
have a word or two to say. 

A philosopher's real power over mankind resides not 
in his metaphysical formulas, but in the spirit and ten- 
dencies which have led him to adopt those formulas. 
Spinoza's critic, therefore, has rather to bring to light 
that spirit and those tendencies of his author, than to 
exhibit his metaphysical formulas. Propositions about 
substance pass by mankind at large like the idle wind, 
which mankind at large regards not ; it will not even 
listen to a word about these propositions, unless it first 



SPINOZA AND THE BIBLE. 273 

learns what their author was driving at with them, and 
finds that this object of his is one with which it sympa- 
thises, one, at any rate, which commands its attention. 
And mankind is so far right that this object of the author 
is really, as has been said, that which is most important, 
that which sets all his work in motion, that which is 
the secret of his attraction for other minds, which, by 
different ways, pursue the same object. 

Mr. Maurice, seeking for the cause of Goethe's great 
admiration for Spinoza, thinks that he finds it in Spinoza's 
Hebrew genius. " He spoke of God," says Mr. Maurice, 
•"as an actual being, to those who had fancied him a 
name in a book. The child of the circumcision had a 
message for Lessing and Goethe which the pagan schools 
of philosophy could not bring." This seems to me, I 
confess, fanciful. An intensity and impress iveness, which 
came to him from his Hebrew nature, Spinoza no doubt 
has ; but the two things which are most remarkable about 
him, and by which, as I think, he chiefly impressed 
Goethe, seem to me not to come to him from his Hebrew 
nature at all, — I mean his denial of final causes, and his 
stoicism, a stoicism not passive, but active. For a mind 
like Goethe's, — a mind profoundly impartial and pas- 
sionately aspiring after the science, not of men only, but 
of universal nature, — the popular philosophy which ex- 
plains all things by reference to man, and regards universal 
nature as existing for the sake of man, and even of cer- 
tain classes of men, was utterly repulsive. Unchecked, 
this philosophy would gladly maintain that the donkey 
exists in order that the invalid Christian may have don- 
key's milk before breakfast ; and such views of nature as 

T 



274 SPINOZA AND THE BIBLE. 

this were exactly what Goethe's whole soul abhorred. 
Creation, he thought, should be made of sterner stuff; 
he desired to rest the donkey's existence on larger 
grounds. More than any philosopher who has ever 
lived, Spinoza satisfied him here. The full exposition 
of the counter-doctrine to the popular doctrine of final 
causes is to be found in the Ethics; but this denial of 
final causes was so essential an element of all Spinoza's 
thinking that we shall, as has been said already, find it 
in the work with which we are here concerned, the 
Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, and, indeed, permeating 
that work and all his works. From the Tractatus 
Theologico-Politicus one may take as good a general 
statement of this denial as any which is to be found in 
the Ethics : — 

" Deus naturam dirigit, prout ejus leges universales, 
non autem prout humanae naturae particulars leges exi- 
gunt, adeoque Deus non solius humani generis, sed totius 
naturae rationem habet." (God directs nature, according 
as the universal laws of nature, but not according as 
the particular laws of human nature require ; and so 
God has regard, 7iot of the human race only, but of entire 
nature?) 

And, as a pendant to this denial by Spinoza of final 
causes, comes his stoicism : — 

" Non studemus, ut natura nobis, sed contra ut nos 
naturae pareamus." (Our desire is ?wt that nature may 
obey us, but, on the contrary, that we may obey nature}) . 

Here is the second source of his attractiveness for 
Goethe ; and Goethe is but the eminent representative 
of a whole order of minds whose admiration has made 



SPINOZA AND THE BIBLE. 275 

Spinoza's fame. Spinoza first impresses Goethe and 
any man like Goethe, and then he composes him ; first 
he fills and satisfies his imagination by the width and 
grandeur of his view of nature, and then he fortifies and 
stills his mobile, straining, passionate, poetic temperament 
by the moral lesson he draws from his view of nature. 
And a moral lesson not of mere resigned acquiescence, 
not of melancholy quietism, but of joyful activity within 
the limits of man's true sphere : — 

"Ipsa hominis essentia est conatus quo unusquisque 
suum esse conservare conatur. . . . Virtus hominis est 
ipsa hominis essentia, quatenus a solo conatu suum esse 
conservandi definitur. . . . Felicitas in eo consistit quod 
homo suum esse conservare potest. . . . Laetitia est 
hominis transitio ad majorem perfectionem. . . . Tristitia 
est hominis transitio ad minorem perfectionem." (Man's 
very esse?ice is the effort wherewith each man strives to 
maintain his own being. . . . Man's virtue is this very 
essence, so far as it is defined by this single effort to 
maintain his own being. . . . Happiness consists in a man's 
being able to' maintain his own being. . . . Joy is man's 
passage to a greater perfection. . . . Sorrow is man's 
passage to a lesser perfection.) 

It seems to me that by neither of these, his grand 
characteristic doctrines, is Spinoza truly Hebrew or truly 
Christian. His denial of final causes is essentially alien 
to the spirit of the Old Testament, and his cheerful and 
self-sufficing stoicism is essentially alien to the spirit of 
the New. The doctrine that " God directs nature, not 
according as the particular laws of human nature, but 
according as the universal laws of nature require," is at 
T 2 



276 SPINOZA AND THE BIBLE. 

utter variance with that Hebrew mode of representing 
God's dealings, which makes the locusts visit Egypt to 
punish Pharaoh's hardness of heart, and the falling dew 
avert itself from the fleece of Gideon. The doctrine 
that " all sorrow is a passage to a lesser perfection" 
is at utter variance with the Christian recognition of the 
blessedness of sorrow, working " repentance to salvation 
not to be repented of;" of sorrow, which, in Dante's 
words, " remarries us to God." 

Spinoza's repeated and earnest assertions that the love 
of God is man's summum bonum do not remove the fun- 
damental diversity between his doctrine and the Hebrew 
and Christian doctrines. By the love of God he does 
not mean the same thing which the Hebrew and Chris- 
tian religions mean by the love of God. He makes the 
love of God to consist in the knowledge of God ; and, 
as we know God only through his manifestation of him- 
self in the laws of all nature, it is by knowing these laws 
that we love God, and the more we know them the 
more we love him. This may be true, but this is not 
what the Christian means by the love of God. Spinoza's 
ideal is the intellectual life ; the Christian's ideal is the 
religious life. Between the two conditions there is all 
the difference which there is between the being in love, 
and the following, with delighted comprehension, a rea- 
soning of Plato. For Spinoza, undoubtedly, the crown 
of the intellectual life is a transport, as for the saint the 
crown of the religious life is a transport; but the two 
transports are not the same. 

This is true ; yet it is true, also, that by thus crowning 
the intellectual life with a sacred transport, by thus 



SPINOZA AND THE BIBLE. 277 

retaining in philosophy, amid the discontented murmurs 
of all the army of atheism, the name of God, Spinoza 
maintains a profound affinity with that which is truest 
in religion, and inspires an indestructible interest. One 
of his admirers, M. Van Vloten, has recently published 
at Amsterdam a supplementary volume to Spinoza's 
works, containing the interesting document of Spinoza's 
sentence of excommunication, from which I have 
already quoted, and containing, besides, several lately 
found works alleged to be Spinoza's, which seem to me 
to be of doubtful authenticity, and, even if authentic, of 
no great importance. M. Van Vloten (who, let me be 
permitted to say in passing, writes a Latin which would 
make one think that the art of writing Latin must be 
now a lost art in the country of Lipsius) is very anxious 
that Spinoza's unscientific retention of the name of God 
should not afflict his readers with any doubts as to his 
perfect scientific orthodoxy : — 

" It is a great mistake," he cries, " to disparage Spinoza 
as merely one of the dogmatists before Kant. By keeping 
the name of God, while he did away with his person and 
character, he has done himself an injustice. Those who 
look to the bottom of things will see, that, long ago as 
he lived, he had even then reached the point to which 
the post-Hegelian philosophy and the study of natural 
science has only just brought our own times. Leibnitz 
expressed his apprehension lest those who did away 
with final causes should do away with God at the same 
time. But it is in his having done away with final causes, 
and with God along with them> that Spinoza's true merit 
consists." 



278 SPINOZA AND THE BIBLE. 

Now it must be remarked that to use Spinoza's denial 
of final causes in order to identify him with the Coryphaei 
of atheism, is to make a false use of Spinoza's denial of 
final causes, just as to use his assertion of the all-import- 
ance of loving God to identify him with the saints would 
be to make a false use of his assertion of the all-import- 
ance of loving God. He is no more to be identified 
with the post-Hegelian philosophers than he is to be 
identified with St. Augustine. Unction, indeed, Spinoza's 
writings have not ; that name does not precisely fit any 
quality which they exhibit. And yet, so all-important 
in the sphere of religious thought is the power of edifica- 
tion, that in this sphere a great fame like Spinoza's can 
never be founded without it. A court of literature can 
never be very severe to Voltaire : with that inimitable wit 
and clear sense of his, he cannot write a page in which 
the fullest head may not find something suggestive : still, 
because, with all his wit and clear sense, he handles 
religious ideas wholly without the power of edification, 
his fame as a great man is equivocal. Dr. Strauss has 
treated the question of Scripture miracles with an acute- 
ness and fulness which even to the most informed minds 
is instructive ; but because he treats it wholly without the 
power of edification, his fame as a serious thinker is equi- 
vocal. But in Spinoza there is not a trace either of 
Voltaire's passion for mockery or of Strauss's passion 
for demolition. His whole soul was filled with desire 
of the love and knowledge of God, and of that only. 
Philosophy always proclaims herself on the way to the 
summum bonum ; but too often on the road she seems 
to forget her destination, and suffers her hearers to 



SPINOZA AND THE BIBLE. 279 

forget it also. Spinoza never forgets his destination : 
"The love of God is man's highest happiness and 
blessedness, and the final end and aim of all human 
actions ; — The supreme reward for keeping God's Word is 
that Word itself — namely, to know him and with free will 
and pure and constant heart love him : " these sentences are 
the keynote to all he produced, and were the inspiration 
of all his labours. This is why he turns so sternly upon 
the worshippers of the letter, — the editors of the Masora, 
the editor of the Record, — because their doctrine imperils 
our love and knowledge of God. "What!" he cries, 
"our knowledge of God to depend upon these perish- 
able things, which Moses can dash to the ground and 
break to pieces like the first tables of stone, or of which 
the originals can be lost like the original book of the 
Covenant, like the original book of the Law of God, like 
the book of the Wars of God ! . . . which can come to 
us confused, imperfect, miswritten by copyists, tampered 
with by doctors ! And you accuse others of impiety ! 
It is you who are impious, to believe that God would 
commit the treasure of the true record of himself to any 
substance less enduring than the heart ! " 

And Spinoza's life was not unworthy of this elevated 
strain. A philosopher who professed that knowledge was 
its own reward, a devotee who professed that the love of 
God was its own reward, this philosopher and this devotee 
believed in what he said. Spinoza led a life the most 
spotless, perhaps, to be found among the lives of philo- 
sophers ; he lived simple, studious, even-tempered, kind ; 
declining honours, declining riches, declining notoriety. 
He was poor, and his admirer Simon de Vries sent him 



280 SPINOZA AND THE BIBLE. 

two thousand florins ; — he refused them. The same friend 
left him his fortune ; — he returned it to the heir. He was 
asked to dedicate one of his works to the magnificent 
patron of letters in his century, Louis the Fourteenth ; — 
he declined. \ His great work, his Ethics, published after 
his death, he gave injunctions to his friends to publish 
anonymously, for fear he should give his name to a 
school. Truth, he thought, should bear no man's name. 
And finally, — " Unless," he said, " I had known that my 
writings would in the end advance the cause of true 
religion, I would have suppressed them, — tacuissem" It 
was in this spirit that he lived ; and this spirit gives to 
all he writes not exactly unction, — I have already said 
so, — but a kind of sacred solemnity. Not of the same 
order as the saints, he yet follows the same service : 
Doubtless thou art our Father, though Abraham be 
ignorant of us, and Israel acknowledge us not. 

Therefore he has been, in a certain sphere, edifying, 
and has inspired in many powerful minds an interest 
and an admiration such as no other philosopher has 
inspired since Plato. The lonely precursor of German 
philosophy, he still shines when the light of his successors 
is fading away ; they had celebrity, Spinoza has fame. 
Not because his peculiar system of philosophy has had 
more adherents than theirs ; on the contrary, it has had 
fewer. But schools of philosophy arise and fall ; their 
bands of adherents inevitably dwindle; no master can 
long persuade a large body of disciples that they give 
to themselves just the same account of the world as he 
does ; it is only the very young and the very enthusiastic 
who can think themselves sure that they possess the 



SPINOZA AND THE BIBLE. 28 1 

whole mind of Plato, or Spinoza, or Hegel, at all The 
very mature and the very sober can even hardly believe 
that these philosophers possessed it themselves enough 
to put it all into their works, and to let us know entirely 
how the world seemed to them. What a remarkable 
philosopher really does for human thought, is to throw 
into circulation a certain number of new and striking 
ideas and expressions, and to stimulate with them the 
thought and imagination of his century or of .after-times. 
So Spinoza has made his distinction between adequate 
and inadequate ideas a current notion for educated 
Europe. So Hegel seized a single pregnant sentence \ 
of Heracleitus, and cast it, with a thousand striking 
applications, into the world of modern thought. But to 
do this is only enough to make a philosopher noteworthy ; 
it is not enough to make him great. To be great, he 
must have something in him which can influence cha- 
racter, which is edifying ; he must, in short, have a noble 
and lofty character himself, a character, — to recur to that 
much-criticised expression of mine, — in the grand style. 
This is what Spinoza had; and because he had it, he 
stands out from the multitude of philosophers, and has 
been able to inspire in powerful minds a feeling which 
the most remarkable philosophers, without this grandiose 
character, could not inspire. "There is no possible 
view of life but Spinoza's," said Lessing. Goethe has 
told us how he was calmed and edified by him in his — 
youth, and how he again went to him for support in his 
maturity. Heine, the man (in spite of his faults) of 
truest genius that Germany has produced since Goethe, 
— a man with faults, as I have said, immense faults, the 



252 SPINOZA AND THE BIBLE. 

greatest of them being that he could reverence so little, — 
reverenced Spinoza. Hegel's influence ran off him like 
water : " I have seen Hegel," he cries, " seated with his 
doleful air of a hatching hen upon his unhappy eggs, 
and I have heard his dismal clucking. — How easily one 
can cheat oneself into thinking that one understands 
everything, when one has learnt only how to construct 
dialectical formulas ! " But of Spinoza, Heine said : 
"His life was a copy of the life of his divine kinsman, 
Jesus Christ." 

And therefore, when M. Van Vloten violently presses 
the parallel with the post-Hegelians, one feels that the 
parallel with St. Augustine is the far truer one. Compared 
with the soldier of irreligion M. Van Vloten would have 
him to be, Spinoza is religious. " It is true," one may 
say to the wise and devout Christian, " Spinoza's con- 
ception of beatitude is not yours, and cannot satisfy you ; 
but whose conception of beatitude would you accept as 
satisfying? Not even that of the devoutest of your 
fellow-Christians. Fra Angelico, the sweetest and most 
inspired of devout souls, has given us, in his great 
picture of the Last Judgment, his conception of beati- 
tude. The elect are going round in a ring on long 
grass under laden fruit-trees ; two of them, more restless 
than the others, are flying up a battlemented street, — a 
street blank with all the ennui of the Middle Ages. 
Across a gulf is visible, for the delectation of the saints, 
a blazing caldron in which Beelzebub is sousing the 
damned. This is hardly more your conception of beati- 
tude than Spinoza's is. But 'in my Father's house are 
many mansions ; ' only, to reach any one of these 



SPINOZA AND THE BIBLE. 283 

mansions, there are needed the wings of a genuine 
sacred transport, of an ' immortal longing.' " These 
wings Spinoza had ; and, because he had them, his own 
language about himself, about his aspirations and his 
course, are true : his foot is in the vera vita, his eye 
on the beatific vision. 



[ 284 ] 



MARCUS AURELIUS. 

Mr. Mill says, in his book on Liberty, that " Christian 
morality is in great part merely a protest against pagan- 
ism ; its ideal is negative rather than positive, passive 
rather than active." He says, that, in certain most im- 
portant respects, " it falls far below the best morality of 
the ancients." Now, the object of systems of morality is 
to take possession of human life, to save it from being 
abandoned to passion or allowed to drift at hazard, to 
give it happiness by establishing it in the practice of 
virtue ; and this object they seek to attain by prescribing 
to human life fixed principles of action, fixed rules of con- 
duct. In its uninspired as well as in its inspired moments, 
in its days of languor and gloom as well as in its days 
of sunshine and energy, human life has thus always a 
clue to follow, and may always be making way towards 
its goal. Christian morality has not failed to supply to 
human life aids of this sort. It has supplied them far 
more abundantly than many of its critics imagine. The 
most exquisite document, after those of the New Testa- 
ment, of all the documents the Christian spirit has ever 
inspired, — the Imitation, — by no means contains the 
whole of Christian morality ; nay, the disparagers of this 
morality would think themselves sure of triumphing if one 



MARCUS AURELIUS. 285 

agreed to look for it in the Imitation only. But even 
the hnitation is full of passages like these : " Vita sine 
proposito languida et vaga est ; " — " Omni die renovare 
debemus propositum nostrum, dicentes : nunc hodie 
perfecte incipiamus, quia nihil est quod hactenus feci- 
mus ; " — " Secundum propositum nostrum est cursus 
profectus nostri;" — " Raro etiam unum vitium perfecte 
vincimus, et ad quotidianum profectum non accendimur ;" 
— " Semper aliquid certi proponendum est ; " — " Tibi ipsi 
violentiam frequenter fac : " (A life without a purpose is 
a languid, drifti?ig thing; — Every day ive ought to renew 
our purpose, saying to ourselves : " this day let us make a 
sound beginning, for what we have hitherto doneas nought;'''' 
— Our improveme?it is in proportio?i to our purpose ; — 
We hardly ever manage to get completely rid eve?i of one 
fault, and do not set our hearts on daily improvement; — 
Always place a definite purpose before thee; — Get the habit 
of mastering thine inclination.) These are moral precepts, 
and moral precepts of the best kind. As rules to hold 
possession of our conduct, and to keep us in the right 
course through outward troubles and inward perplexity, 
they are equal to the best ever furnished by the great 
masters of morals, — Epictetus or Marcus Aurelius. 

But moral rules, apprehended as ideas first, and then 
rigorously followed as laws, are, and must be, for the sage 
only. The mass of mankind have neither force of in- 
tellect enough to apprehend them clearly as ideas, nor 
force of character enough to follow them strictly as laws. 
The mass of mankind can be carried along a course full 
of hardship for the natural man, can be borne over the 
thousand impediments of the narrow way, only by the 



286 MARCUS AURELIUS. 

tide of a joyful and bounding emotion. It is impossible 
to rise from reading Epictetus or Marcus Aurelius without 
a sense of constraint and melancholy, without feeling 
that the burden laid upon man is well-nigh greater than 
he can bear. Honour to the sages who have felt this, and 
yet have borne it ! Yet, even for the sage, this sense of 
labour and sorrow in his march towards the goal consti- 
tutes a relative inferiority ; the noblest souls of whatever 
creed, the pagan Empedocles as well as the Christian 
Paul, have insisted on the necessity of an inspiration, a 
joyful emotion, to make moral action perfect ; an obscure 
indication of this necessity is the one drop of truth in 
the ocean ,of verbiage with which the controversy on 
justification by faith has flooded the world. But, for the 
ordinary man, this sense of labour and sorrow constitutes 
an absolute disqualification ; it paralyses him ; under the 
weight of it, he cannot make way towards the goal at all. 
The paramount virtue of religion is, that it has lighted up 
morality; that it has supplied the emotion and inspira- 
tion needful for carrying the sage along the narrow way 
perfectly, for carrying the ordinary man along it at all. 
Even the religions with most dross in them have had 
something of this virtue; but the Christian religion 
manifests it with unexampled splendour. " Lead me, 
Zeus and Destiny!" says the prayer of Epictetus, "whither- 
soever I am appointed to go ; I will follow without 
wavering ; even though I turn coward and shrink, I shall 
have to follow all the same." The fortitude of that is for 
the strong, for the few ; even for them the spiritual atmo- 
sphere with which it surrounds them is bleak and grey. 
But, " Let thy loving spirit lead me forth into the land 



MARCUS AURELIUS. 287 

of righteousness j " — " The Lord shall be unto thee an 
everlasting light, and thy God thy glory ; " — " Unto you 
that fear my name shall the sun of righteousness arise 
with healing in his wings," says the Old Testament; 
" Born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of 
the will of man, but of God ; " — " Except a man be born 
again, he cannot see the kingdom of God ; " — " Whatso- 
ever is born of God, overcometh the world," says the 
New. The ray of sunshine is there, the glow of a divine 
warmth ; — the austerity of the sage melts away under it, 
the paralysis of the weak is healed : he who is vivified by 
it renews his strength ; "all things are possible to him ; " 
" he is a new creature." 

Epictetus says : " Every matter has two handles, one 
of which will bear taking hold of, the other not. If thy 
brother sin against thee, lay not hold of the matter by 
this, that he sins against thee; for by this handle the 
matter will not bear taking hold of. But rather lay hold 
of it by this, that he is thy brother, thy born mate ; and 
thou wilt take hold of it by what will bear handling." 
Jesus, asked whether a man is bound to forgive his ■ 
brother as often as seven times, answers : " I say not unto 
thee, until seven times, but until seventy times seven." 
Epictetus here suggests to the reason grounds for for- 
giveness of injuries which Jesus does not; but it is 
vain to say that Epictetus is on that account a better 
moralist than Jesus, if the warmth, the emotion, of Jesus's 
answer fires his hearer to the practice of forgiveness of 
injuries, while the thought in Epictetus's leaves him cold. 
So with Christian morality in general : its distinction is 
not that it propounds the maxim, " Thou shalt love God 



255 MARCUS AURELIUS. 

and thy neighbour," with more development, closer rea- 
soning, truer sincerity, than other moral systems; it is 
that it propounds this maxim with an inspiration which 
wonderfully catches the hearer and makes him act upon 
it. It is because Mr. Mill has attained to the perception 
of truths of this nature, that he is, — instead of being, like 
the school from which he proceeds, doomed to sterility, 
— a writer of distinguished mark and influence, a writer 
deserving all attention and respect ; it is (I must be par- 
doned for saying) because he is not sufficiently leavened 
with them, that he falls just short of being a great 
writer. 

That which gives to the moral writings of the Emperor 
Marcus Aurelius their peculiar character and charm, is 
their being suffused and softened by something of this 
very sentiment whence Christian morality draws its best 
power. Mr. Long has recently published in a convenient 
form a translation of these writings, and has thus enabled 
English readers to judge Marcus Aurelius for themselves; 
he has rendered his countrymen a real service by so 
doing. Mr. Long's reputation as a scholar is a sufficient 
guarantee of the general fidelity and accuracy of his 
translation ; on these matters, besides, I am hardly en- 
titled to speak, and my praise is of no value. But that 
for which I and the rest of the unlearned may venture to 
praise Mr. Long is this ; that he treats Marcus Aurelius's 
writings, as he treats all the other remains of Greek and 
Roman antiquity which he touches, not as a dead and 
dry matter of learning, but as documents with a side of 
modern applicability and living interest, and valuable 
mainly so far as this side in them can be made clear ; 



MARCUS AURELIUS. 289 

that as in his notes on Plutarch's Roman Lives he 
deals with the modern epoch of Caesar and Cicero, not 
as food for schoolboys, but as food for men, and men 
engaged in the current of contemporary life and action, 
so in his remarks and essays on Marcus Aurelius he 
treats this truly modern striver and thinker not as 
a Classical Dictionary hero, but as a present source 
from which to draw " example of life, and instruction of 
manners." Why may not a son of Dr. Arnold say, what 
might naturally here be said by any other critic, that in 
this lively and fruitful way of considering the men and 
affairs of ancient Greece and Rome, Mr. Long resembles 
Dr. Arnold? 

One or two little complaints, however, I have against 
Mr. Long, and I will get them off my mind at once. 
In the first place, why could he not have found gentler 
and juster terms to describe the translation of his best 
known predecessor, Jeremy Collier, — the redoubtable 
enemy of stage plays, — than these : "a most coarse and 
vulgar copy of the original " ? As a matter of taste, a 
translator should deal leniently with his predecessor; but 
putting that out of the question, Mr. Long's language is 
a great deal too hard. Most English people who knew 
Marcus Aurelius before Mr. Long appeared as his in- 
troducer, knew him through Jeremy Collier. And the 
acquaintance of a man like Marcus Aurelius is such an 
imperishable benefit, that one can never lose a peculiar 
sense of obligation towards the man who confers it. 
Apart from this claim upon one's tenderness, however, 
Jeremy Collier's version deserves respect for its genuine 
spirit and vigour, the spirit and vigour of the age of 

u 



290 MARCUS AURELIUS. 

Dryden. Jeremy Collier too, like Mr. Long, regarded 
in Marcus Aurelius the living moralist, and not the dead 
classic ; and his warmth of feeling gave to his style an 
impetuosity and rhythm which from Mr. Long's style (I 
do not blame it on that account) are absent. Let us 
place the two side by side. The impressive opening 
of Marcus Aurelius 's fifth book, Mr. Long translates 
thus : — 

" In the morning when thou risest unwillingly, let this 
thought be present : I am rising to the work of a human 
being. Why then am I dissatisfied if I am going to do 
the things for which I exist and for which I was brought 
into the world ? Or have I been made for this, to lie in 
the bed-clothes and keep myself warm ? — But this is more 
pleasant. — Dost thou exist then to take thy pleasure, and 
not at all for action or exertion ? " 

Jeremy Collier has : — 

" When you find an unwillingness to rise early in the 
morning, make this short speech to yourself : ' I am 
getting up now to do the business of a man; and am 
I out of humour for going about that which I was made 
for, and for the sake of which I was sent into the world ? 
Was I then designed for nothing but to doze and batten 
beneath the counterpane? I thought action had been 
the end of your being."' 

In another striking passage, again, Mr. Long has : — 

" No longer wander at hazard ; for neither wilt thou 
read thy own memoirs, nor the acts of the ancient 
Romans and Hellenes, and the selections from books 
which thou wast reserving for thy old age. Hasten then 
to the end which thou hast before thee, and, throwing 



MARCUS AURELIUS. 29 I 

away idle hopes, come to thine own aid, if thou carest at 
all for thyself, while it is in thy power." 

Here his despised predecessor has : — 

" Don't go too far in your books and overgrasp your- 
self. Alas, you have no time left to peruse your diary, 
to read over the Greek and Roman history : come, don't 
flatter and deceive yourself; look to the main chance, 
to the end and design of reading, and mind life more 
than notion : I say, if you have a kindness for your 
person, drive at the practice and help yourself, for that 
is in your own power." 

It seems to me that here for style and force Jeremy 
Collier can (to say the least) perfectly stand comparison 
with Mr. Long. Jeremy Collier's real defect as a trans- 
lator is not his coarseness and vulgarity, but his imperfect 
acquaintance with Greek ; this is a serious defect, a fatal 
one ; it renders a translation like Mr. Long's necessary. 
Jeremy Collier's work will now be forgotten, and Mr. 
Long stands master of the field ; but he may be content, 
at any rate, to leave his predecessor's grave unharmed, 
even if he will not throw upon it, in passing, a handfui 
of kindly earth. 

Another complaint I have against Mr. Long is, that he 
is not quite idiomatic and simple enough. It is a little 
formal, at least, if not pedantic, to say Ethic and Dialectic, 
instead of Ethics and Dialectics ; and to say, "Hellenes 
and Romans" instead of "Greeks and Romans." And 
why, too, — the name of Antoninus being preoccupied by 
Antoninus Pius, — will Mr. Long call his author Marcus 
Antoninus instead of Marcus Aurelius ? Small as these 
matters appear, they are important when one has to 
u 2 



292 MARCUS AURELIUS. 

deal with the general public, and not with a small circle 
of scholars ; and it is the general public that the trans- 
lator of a short masterpiece on morals, such as is the 
book of Marcus Aurelius, should have in view ; his aim 
should be to make Marcus Aurelius's work as popular as 
the Imitation, and Marcus Aurelius's name as familiar 
as Socrates' s. In rendering or naming him, therefore, 
punctilious accuracy of phrase is not so much to be 
sought as accessibility and currency ; everything which 
may best enable the Emperor and his precepts volitare 
per or a virum. It is essential to render him in language 
perfectly plain and unprofessional, and to call him by the 
name by which he is best and most distinctly known. 
The translators of the Bible talk of pence and not denarii, 
and the admirers of Voltaire do not celebrate him under 
the name of Arouet. 

But, after these trifling complaints are made, one must 
end, as one began, in unfeigned gratitude to Mr. Long for 
his excellent and substantial reproduction in English of an 
invaluable work. In general the substantiality, soundness, 
and precision of Mr. Long's rendering are (I will venture, 
after all, to give my opinion about them) as conspicuous 
as the living spirit with which he treats antiquity; and 
these qualities are particularly desirable in the translator 
of a work like Marcus Aurelius's, of which the language is 
often corrupt, almost always hard and obscure. Any one 
who wants to appreciate Mr. Long's merits as a translator 
may read, in the original and in Mr. Long's translation, 
the seventh chapter of the tenth book ; he will see how, 
through all the dubiousness and involved manner of the 
Greek, Mr. Long has firmly seized upon the clear thought 



MARCUS AURELIUS. 293 

which is certainly at the bottom of that troubled wording, 
and, in distinctly rendering this thought, has at the same 
time thrown round its expression a characteristic shade 
of painfulness and difficulty which just suits it. And 
Marcus Aurelius's book is one which, when it is rendered 
so accurately as Mr. Long renders it, even those who 
know Greek tolerably well may choose to read rather in 
the translation than in the original. For not only are 
the contents here incomparably more valuable than the 
external form, but this form, the Greek of a Roman, is not 
exactly one of those styles which have a physiognomy, 
which are an essential part of their author, which stamp 
an indelible impression of him on the reader's mind. An 
Old Lyons commentator finds, indeed, in Marcus Aure- 
lius's Greek, something characteristic, something specially 
firm and imperial ; but I think an ordinary mortal will 
hardly find this : he wilUfind crabbed Greek, without any 
great charm of distinct physiognomy. The Greek of 
Thucydides and Plato has this charm, and he who reads 
them in a translation, however accurate, loses it, and loses 
much in losing it; but the Greek of Marcus Aurelius, like ] 
the Greek of the New Testament, and even more than the 
Greek of the New Testament, is wanting in it. If one 
could be assured that the English Testament were made 
perfectly accurate, one might be almost content never to 
open a Greek Testament again ; and, Mr. Long's version 
of Marcus Aurelius being what it is, an Englishman who 
reads to live, and does not live to read, may henceforth 
let the Greek original repose upon its shelf. 

The man whose thoughts Mr. Long has thus faithfully 
reproduced, is perhaps the most beautiful figure in history. 



294 MARCUS AURELIUS. 

He is one of those consoling and hope-inspiring marks, 
which stand for ever to remind our weak and easily 
discouraged race how high human goodness and perse- 
verance have once been carried, and may be carried 
again. The interest of mankind is peculiarly attracted 
by examples of signal goodness in high places ; for that 
testimony to the worth of goodness is the most striking 
which is borne by those to whom all the means of plea- 
sure and self-indulgence lay open, by those who had at 
their command the kingdoms of the world and the glory 
of them. Marcus Aurelius was the ruler of the grandest 
of empires ; and he was one of the best of men. Besides 
him, history presents one or two other sovereigns eminent 
for their goodness, such as Saint Louis or Alfred. But 
Marcus Aurelius has, for us moderns, this great superiority 
in interest over Saint Louis or Alfred, that he lived and 
acted in a state of society modern by its essential cha- 
racteristics, in an epoch akin to our own, in a brilliant 
centre of civilisation. Trajan talks of " our enlightened 
age" just as glibly as the Times talks of it. Marcus 
Aurelius thus becomes for us a man like ourselves, a man 
in all things tempted as we are. Saint Louis inhabits an 
atmosphere of mediaeval Catholicism, which the man of 
the nineteenth century may admire, indeed, may even 
passionately wish to inhabit, but which, strive as he will, 
he cannot really inhabit : Alfred belongs to a state of 
society (I say it with all deference to the Saturday 
Review critic who keeps such jealous watch over the 
honour of our Saxon ancestors) half barbarous. Neither 
Alfred nor Saint Louis can be morally and intellectually 
as near to us as Marcus Aurelius. 



MARCUS AURELIUS. 295 

The record of the outward life of this admirable man 
has in it little of striking incident. He was born at Rome 
on the 26th of April, in the year 121 of the Christian era. 
He was nephew and son-in-law to his predecessor on the 
throne, Antoninus Pius. When Antoninus died, he was 
forty years old, but from the time of his earliest manhood 
he had assisted in administering public affairs. Then, 
after his uncle's death in 161, for nineteen years he 
reigned as emperor. The barbarians were pressing on 
the Roman frontier, and a great part of Marcus Aurelius's 
nineteen years of reign was passed in campaigning. 
His absences from Rome were numerous and long : 
we hear of him in Asia Minor, Syria, Egypt, Greece ; 
but, above all, in the countries on the Danube, where 
the war with the barbarians was going on, — in Austria, 
Moravia, Hungary. In these countries much of his 
Journal seems to have been written; parts of it are 
dated from them; and there, a few weeks before his 
fifty-ninth birthday, he fell sick and died.* The record 
of him on which his fame chiefly rests is the record of 
his inward life, — his Journal, or Comme?itaries i or Medi- 
tations , or Thoughts, for by all these names has the 
work been called. Perhaps the most interesting of the 
records of his outward life is that which the first book 
of this work supplies, where he gives an account of his 
education, recites the names of those to whom he is 
indebted for it, and enumerates his obligations to each of 
them. It is a refreshing and consoling picture, a priceless 
treasure for those, who, sick of the " wild and dreamlike 
trade of blood and guile," which seems to be nearly the 
* He died on the 17th of March, a.d. 180. «• 



296 MARCUS AURELIUS. 

whole of what history has to offer to our view, seek eagerly 
for that substratum of right thinking and well-doing which 
in all ages must surely have somewhere existed, for 
without it the continued life of humanity would have 
been impossible. " From my mother I learnt piety and 
beneficence, and abstinence not only from evil deeds but 
even from evil thoughts; and further, simplicity in my 
way of living, far removed from the habits of the rich." 
Let us remember that, the next time we are reading the 
sixth satire of Juvenal. " From my tutor I learnt" (hear 
it, ye tutors of princes !) " endurance of labour, and to 
want little, and to work with my own hands, and not to 
meddle with other people's affairs, and not to be ready- 
to listen to slander." The vices and foibles of the Greek 
sophist or rhetorician — the Grceculus esuriens — are in 
everybody's mind ; but he who reads Marcus Aurelius's 
account of his Greek teachers and masters, will under- 
stand how it is that, in spite of the vices and foibles of 
individual Grceadi, the education of the human race 
owes to Greece a debt which can never be overrated. 
The vague and colourless praise of history leaves on the 
mind hardly any impression of Antoninus Pius : it is only 
from the private memoranda of his nephew that we learn 
what a disciplined, hard-working, gentle, wise, virtuous 
man he was ; a man who, perhaps, interests mankind 
less than his immortal nephew only because he has left in 
writing no record of his inner life, — caret quia vate sacro. 
Of the outward life and circumstances of Marcus 
Aurelius, beyond these notices which he has himself 
supplied, there are few of much interest and importance. 
There is the fine anecdote of his speech when he heard 



MARCUS AURELIUS. 297 

of the assassination of the revolted Avidius Cassius, 
against whom he was marching ; he was sorry, he said, \j 
to be deprived of the pleasure of pardo?iing him. And 
there are one or two more anecdotes of him which 
show the same spirit. But the great record for the out- 
ward life of a man who has left such a record of his 
lofty inward aspirations as that which Marcus Aurelius 
has left, is the clear consenting voice of all his con- 
temporaries, — high and low, friend and enemy, pagan and 
Christian, — in praise of his sincerity, justice, and good- 
ness. The world's charity does not err on the side of 
excess, and here was a man occupying the most con- 
spicuous station in the world, and professing the highest 
possible standard of conduct; — yet the world was obliged 
to declare that he walked worthily of his profession. 
Long after his death, his bust was to be seen in the 
houses of private men through the wide Roman empire : 
it may be the vulgar part of human nature which busies 
itself with the semblance and doings of living sovereigns, 
it is its nobler part which busies itself with those of the 
dead ; these busts of Marcus Aurelius, in the homes of 
Gaul, Britain, and Italy, bore witness, not to the inmates' 
frivolous curiosity about princes and palaces, but to 
their reverential memory of the passage of a great man 
upon the earth. 

Two things, however, before one turns from the out- 
ward to the inward life of Marcus Aurelius, force them- 
selves upon one's notice, and demand a word of comment ; 
he persecuted the Christians, and he had for his son 
the vicious and brutal Commodus. The persecution at ! 
Lyons, in which Attalus and Pothinus suffered, the 



298 MARCUS AURELIUS. 

persecution at Smyrna, in which Polycarp suffered, took 
place in his reign. Of his humanity, of his tolerance, of 
his horror of cruelty and violence, of his wish to refrain 
from severe measures against the Christians, of his anxiety 
to temper the severity of these measures when they 
appeared to him indispensable, there is no doubt : but, 
on the one hand, it is certain that the letter, attributed to 
him, directing that no Christian should be punished for 
being a Christian, is spurious ; it is almost certain that his 
alleged answer to the authorities of Lyons, in which he 
directs that Christians persisting in their profession shall 
be dealt with according to law, is genuine. Mr. Long 
seems inclined to try and throw doubt over the persecu- 
tion at Lyons, by pointing out that the letter of the 
Lyons Christians relating it, alleges it to have been at- 
tended by miraculous and incredible incidents. " A 
man," he says, " can only act consistently by accepting 
all this letter or rejecting it all, and we cannot blame 
him for either." But it is contrary to all experience to 
say that because a fact is related with incorrect additions 
and embellishments, therefore it probably never hap- 
pened at all ; or that it is not, in general, easy for an 
impartial mind to distinguish between the fact and the 
embellishments. I cannot doubt that the Lyons perse- 
cution took place, and that the punishment of Christians 
for being Christians was sanctioned by Marcus Aurelius. 
But then I must add that nine modern readers out of ten, 
when they read this, will, I believe, have a perfectly false 
notion of what the moral action of Marcus Aurelius, in 
sanctioning that punishment, really was. They imagine 
Trajan, or Antoninus Pius, or Marcus Aurelius, fresh 



MARCUS AURELIUS. 299 

from the perusal of the Gospel, fully aware of the spirit 
and holiness of the Christian saints, ordering their exter- 
mination because he loved darkness rather than light. 
Far from this, the Christianity which these emperors 
aimed at repressing was, in their conception of it, some- 
thing philosophically contemptible, politically subversive, 
and morally abominable. As men, they sincerely re- 
garded it much as well-conditioned people, with us, 
regard Mormonism j as rulers, they regarded it much as 
Liberal statesmen, with us, regard the Jesuits. A kind 
of Mormonism, constituted as a vast secret society, with 
obscure aims of political and social subversion, was what 
Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius believed themselves 
to be repressing when they punished Christians. The 
early Christian apologists again and again declare to us 
under what odious imputations the ■Christians lay, how 
general was the belief that these imputations were well- 
grounded, how sincere was the horror which the belief 
inspired. The multitude, convinced that the Christians 
were atheists who ate human flesh and thought incest no 
crime, displayed against them a fury so passionate as to 
embarrass and alarm their rulers. The severe expressions 
of Tacitus, exitiabilis super stitio — odio humani generis con- 
victi, show how deeply the prejudices of the multitude 
imbued the educated class also. One asks oneself with 
astonishment how a doctrine so benign as that of Christ 
can have incurred misrepresentation so monstrous. The 
inner and moving cause of the misrepresentation lay, no 
doubt, in this, — that Christianity was a new spirit in the 
Roman world, destined to act in that world as its dis- 
solvent; and it was inevitable that Christianity in the 



300 MARCUS AURELIUS. 

Roman world, like democracy in the modern world, like 
every new spirit with a similar mission assigned to it, 
should at its first appearance occasion an instinctive 
shrinking and repugnance in the world which it was to 
dissolve. The outer and palpable causes of the mis- 
representation were, for the Roman public at large, the 
confounding of the Christians with the Jews, that isolated, 
fierce, and stubborn race, whose stubbornness, fierceness, 
and isolation, real as they were, the fancy of a civilised 
Roman yet farther exaggerated ; the atmosphere of 
mystery and novelty which surrounded the Christian 
rites ; the very simplicity of Christian theism ; — for the 
Roman statesman, the character of secret assemblages 
which the meetings of the Christian community wore, 
under a State-system as jealous of unauthorised associa- 
tions as the State-system of modern France. 

A Roman of Marcus Aurelius's time and position could 
not well see the Christians except through the mist of 
these prejudices. Seen through such a mist, the Chris- 
tians appeared with a thousand faults not their own : but 
it has not been sufficiently remarked that faults, really 
their own, many of them assuredly appeared with besides, 
faults especially likely to strike such an observer as 
Marcus Aurelius, and to confirm him in the prejudices 
of his race, station, and rearing. We look back upon 
Christianity after it has proved what a future it bore 
within it, and for us the sole representatives of its early 
struggles are the pure and devoted spirits through whom 
it proved this ; Marcus Aurelius saw it with its future 
yet unshown, and with the tares among its professed 
progeny not less conspicuous than the wheat. Who can 



MARCUS AURELIUS. 30I 

doubt that among the professing Christians of the second 
century, as among the professing Christians of the nine- 
teenth, there was plenty of folly, plenty of rabid non- 
sense, plenty of gross fanaticism? who will even venture 
to affirm that, separated in great measure from the 
intellect and civilisation of the world for one or two 
centuries, Christianity, wonderful as have been its fruits, 
had the development perfectly worthy of its inestimable 
germ ? Who will venture to affirm that, by the alliance 
of Christianity with the virtue and intelligence of men 
like the Antonines, — of the best product of Greek and 
Roman civilisation, while Greek and Roman civilisation 
had yet life and power, — Christianity and the world, as 
well as the Antonines themselves, would not have been 
gainers? That alliance was not to be; — the Antonines 
lived. and died with an utter misconception of Chris- 
tianity ; Christianity grew up in the Catacombs, not on 
the Palatine. Marcus Aurelius incurs no moral reproach 1 J 
by having authorised the punishment of the Christians ; he 
does not thereby become in the least what we mean by 
a persecutor. One may concede that it was impossible 
for him to see Christianity as it really was; — as impossible 
as for even the moderate and sensible Fleury to see the 
Antonines as they really were ; — one may concede that 
the point of view from which Christianity appeared some- 
thing anti-civil and an ti- social, which the State had the 
faculty to judge and the duty to suppress, was inevitably 
his. Still, however, it remains true, that this sage, who 1 
made perfection his aim and reason his law, did Chris- 
tianity an immense injustice, and rested in an idea of 
State-attributes which was illusive. And this is, in truth, 



302 MARCUS AURELIUS. 

characteristic of Marcus Aurelius, that he is blameless, 
yet, in a certain sense, unfortunate; in his character, 
beautiful as it is, there is something melancholy, circum- 
scribed, and ineffectual. 

For of his having such a son as Commodus, too, one 
must say that he is not to be blamed on that account, 
but. that he is unfortunate. Disposition and tempera- 
ment are inexplicable things; there are natures on which 
the best education and example are thrown away: ex- 
cellent fathers may have, without any fault of theirs, 
incurably vicious sons. It is to be remembered, also, 
that Commodus was left, at the perilous age of nineteen, 
master of the world ; while his father, at that age, was 
but beginning a twenty years' apprenticeship to wisdom, 
labour, and self-command, under the sheltering teacher- 
ship of his uncle Antoninus. Commodus was a prince 
apt to be led by favourites ; and if the story is true which 
says that he left, all through his reign, the Christians 
untroubled, and ascribes this lenity to the influence of 
his mistress Marcia, it shows that he could be led to 
good as well as to evil ; — for such a nature to be left at 
a critical age with absolute power, and wholly without 
good counsel and direction, was the more fatal. Still 
one cannot help wishing that the example of Marcus 
Aurelius could have availed more with his own only son; 
one cannot but think that with such virtue as his there 
should go, too, the ardour which removes mountains, 
and that the ardour which removes mountains might have 
I even won Commodus : the word ineffectual again rises 
\ to one's mind ; Marcus Aurelius saved his own soul by 
' his righteousness, and he could do no more. Happy 



MARCUS AURELIUS. 303 

they, who can do this ! but still happier, who can do 
more ! 

Yet, when one passes from his outward to his inward 
life, when one turns over the pages of his Meditations, — 
entries jotted down from day to day, amid the business 
of the city or the fatigues of the camp, for his own 
guidance and support, meant for no eye but his own, 
without the slightest attempt at style, with no care, even, 
for correct writing, not to be surpassed for naturalness 
and sincerity, — all disposition to carp and cavil dies 
away, and one is overpowered by the charm of a cha- , 
racter of such purity, delicacy, and virtue. He fails 
neither in small things nor in great ; he keeps watch 
over himself both that the great springs of action may 
be right in him, and that the minute details of action may 
be right also. How admirable in a hard-tasked ruler, and 
a ruler, too, with a passion for thinking and reading, is 
such a memorandum as the following : — 

" Not frequently nor without necessity to say to any 
one, or to write in a letter, that I have no leisure ; nor 
continually to excuse the neglect of duties required by 
our relation to those with whom we live, by alleging 
urgent occupation." 

And, when that ruler is a Roman emperor, what an 
"idea" is this to be written down and meditated by him : — 

" The idea of a polity in which there is the same law 
for all, a polity administered with regard to equal rights 
and equal freedom of speech, and the idea of a kingly 
government which respects most of all the freedom of 
the governed." 

And, for all men who " drive at practice," what prac- 



304 MARCUS AURELIUS. 

tical rules may not one accumulate out of these Medi- 
tations : — 

" The greatest part of what we say or do being unne- 
cessary, if a man takes this away, he will have more 
leisure and less uneasiness. Accordingly, on every 
occasion a man should ask himself: ' Is this one of the 
unnecessary things ? ' Now a man should take away not 
only unnecessary acts, but also unnecessary thoughts, 
for thus superfluous acts will not follow after." 

And again : — 

" We ought to check in the series of our thoughts 
everything that is without a purpose and useless, but 
most of all the over-curious feeling and the malignant ; 
and a man should use himself to think of those things 
only about which if one should suddenly ask, 'What 
hast thou now in thy thoughts ? ' with perfect openness 
thou mightest immediately answer, ' This or That ; ' so 
that from thy words it should be plain that everything in 
thee is simple and benevolent, and such as befits a social 
animal, and one that cares not for thoughts about sensual 
enjoyments, or any rivalry or envy and suspicion, or 
anything else for which thou wouldst blush if thou 
shouldst say thou hadst it in thy mind." 

So, with a stringent practicalness worthy of Franklin, 
he discourses on his favourite text, Let nothing be done 
without a purpose. But it is when he enters the region 
where Franklin cannot follow him, when he utters his 
thoughts on the ground-motives of human action, that 
he is most interesting; — that he becomes the unique, the 
incomparable Marcus Aurelius. Christianity uses lan- 
guage very liable to be misunderstood when it seems 



MARCUS AURELIUS. 305 

to tell men to do good, not, certainly, from the vulgar 
motives of worldly interest, or vanity, or love of human 
praise, but that " their Father which seeth in secret may 
reward them openly." The motives of reward and 
punishment have come, from the misconception of lan- 
guage of this kind, to be strangely overpressed by many 
Christian moralists, to the deterioration and disfigure- 
ment of Christianity. Marcus Aurelius says, truly and 
nobly : — 

" One man, when he has done a service to another, 
is ready to set it down to his account as a favour con- 
ferred. Another is not ready to do this, but still in his 
own mind he thinks of the man as his debtor, and he 
knows what he has done. A third in a manner does 
not even know what he has done, but he is like a vine 
which has produced grapes, and seeks for nothing more after 
it has once produced its proper fruit. As a horse when 
he has run, a dog when he has caught the game, a bee 
when it has made its honey, so a man when he has done 
a good act, does not call out for others to come and see, 
but he goes on to another act, as a vine goes on to produce 
again the grapes in season. Must a man, then, be one 
of these, who in a manner acts thus without observing it? 
Yes." 

And again : — 

" What more dost thou want when thou hast done a 
man a service? Art thou not content that thou hast 
done something conformable to thy nature, and dost 
thou seek to be paid for it, just as if the eye dejnanded a 
recompense for seeing, or the feet for walking ? " 

Christianity, in order to match morality of this strain, 
x 



306 MARCUS AURELIUS. 

has to correct its apparent offers of external reward, and 
to say : The kingdom of God is within you. 

I have said that it is by its accent of emotion that the 
morality of Marcus Aurelius acquires a special character, 

f and reminds one of Christian morality. The sentences 
of Seneca are stimulating to the intellect ; the sentences 

I of Epictetus are fortifying to the character ; the sentences 
of Marcus Aurelius find their way to the soul. I have 

i said that religious emotion has the power to light up 
morality : the emotion of Marcus Aurelius does not quite 
light up his morality, but it suffuses it; it has not power 
to melt the clouds of effort and austerity quite away, 
but it shines through them and glorifies them; it is a 
spirit, not so much of gladness and elation, as of gentle- 
ness and sweetness ; a delicate and tender sentiment, 
which is less than joy and more than resignation. He 
says that in his youth he learned from Maximus, one 
of his teachers, " cheerfulness in all circumstances as 
well as in illness ; and a just admixture i?i the moral 
character of sweetness and dignity ; " and it is this very 
admixture of sweetness with his dignity which makes 
him so beautiful a moralist. It enables him to carry 
even into his observation of nature a delicate penetra- 
tion, a sympathetic tenderness, worthy of Wordsworth ; 
the spirit of such a remark as the following has hardly a 
parallel, so far as my knowledge goes, in the whole range 
of Greek and Roman literature : — 

" Figs, when they are quite ripe, gape open ; and in 
the ripe olives the very circumstance of their being near 
to rottenness adds a peculiar beauty to the fruit And 
the ears of corn bending down, and the lion's eyebrows, 



MARCUS AURELIUS. 307 

and the foam which flows from the mouth of wild boars, 
and many other things, — though they are far from being, 
beautiful, in a certain sense, — still, because they come 
in the course of nature, have a beauty in them, and 
they please the mind ; so that if a man should have a 
feeling and a deeper insight with respect to the things 
which are produced in the universe, there is hardly any- 
thing which comes in the course of nature which will not 
seem to him to be in a manner disposed so as to give 
pleasure." 

But it is when his strain passes to directly moral 
subjects that his delicacy and sweetness lend to it the 
greatest charm. Let those who can feel the beauty of 
spiritual refinement read this, the reflection of an 
emperor who prized mental superiority highly: — 

" Thou sayest, ' Men cannot admire the sharpness of 
thy wits.' Be it so ; but there are many other things of 
which thou canst not say, ' I am not formed for them by 
nature.' Show those qualities, then, which are altogether 
in thy power, — sincerity, gravity, endurance of labour, 
aversion to pleasure, contentment with thy portion and 
with few things, benevolence, frankness, no love of super- 
fluity, freedom from trifling, magnanimity. Dost thou 
not see how many qualities thou art at once able to 
exhibit, as to which there is no excuse of natural inca- 
pacity and unfitness, and yet thou still remainest volun- 
tarily below the mark ? Or art thou compelled, through 
being defectively furnished by nature, to murmur, and to 
be mean, and to flatter, and to find fault with thy poor 
body, and to try to please men, and to make great 
display, and to be so restless in thy mind ? No, indeed ; 
x 2 



308 MARCUS AURELIUS. 

but thou mightest have been delivered from these things 
long ago. Only, if in truth thou canst be charged with 
being rather slow and dull of comprehension, thou must 
exert thyself about this also, not neglecting nor yet 
taking pleasure in thy dulness." 

The same sweetness enables him to fix his mind, when 
he sees the isolation and moral death caused by sin, not 
on the cheerless thought of the misery of this condition, 
but on the inspiriting thought that man is blest with the 
power to escape from it : — 

" Suppose that thou hast detached thyself from the 
natural unity, — for thou wast made by nature a part, but 
now thou hast cut thyself off, — yet here is this beautiful 
provision, that it is in thy power again to unite thyself 
God has allowed this to no other part, — after it has been 
separated and cut asunder, to come together again. But 
consider the goodness with which he has privileged man ; 
for he has put it in his power, when he has been sepa- 
rated, to return and to be united and to resume his 
place." 

It enables him to control even the passion for retreat 
and solitude, so strong in a soul like his, to which the 
world could offer no abiding city : — 

" Men seek retreat for themselves, houses in the 
country, sea-shores, and mountains ; and thou, too, art 
wont to desire such things very much. But this is alto- 
gether a mark of the most common sort of men, for it is 
in thy power whenever thou shalt choose to retire into 
thyself. For nowhere either with more quiet or more 
freedom from trouble does a man retire than into his own 
soul, particularly when he has within him such thoughts 



MARCUS AURELIUS. 309 

that by looking into them he is immediately in perfect 
tranquillity. Constantly, then, give to thyself this retreat, 
and renew thyself; and let thy principles be brief and 
fundamental, which, as soon as thou shalt recur to them, 
will be sufficient to cleanse the soul completely, and to 
send thee back free from all discontent with the things 
to which thou returnest." 

Against this feeling of discontent and weariness, so 
natural to the great for whom there seems nothing left 
to desire or to strive after, but so enfeebling to them, so 
deteriorating, Marcus Aurelius never ceased to struggle. 
With resolute thankfulness he kept in remembrance the 
blessings of his lot; the true blessings of it, not the false : — 

" I have to thank Heaven that I was subjected to a 
ruler and a father (Antoninus Pius) who was able to 
take away all pride from me, and to bring me to the 
knowledge that it is possible for a man to live in a palace 
without either guards, or embroidered dresses, or any 
show of this kind ; but that it is in such a man's power 
to bring himself very near to the fashion of a private 
person, without being for this reason either meaner in 
thought or more remiss in action with respect to the 
things which must be done for public interest. ... I 
have to be thankful that my children have not been 
stupid nor deformed in body ; that I did not make more 
proficiency in rhetoric, poetry, and the other studies, by 
which I should perhaps have been completely engrossed, 
if I had seen that I was making great progress in them ; 
. . . that I knew Apollonius, Rusticus, Maximus; . . . 
that I received clear and frequent impressions about 
living according to nature, and.what kind of a life that 



310 MARCUS AURELIUS. 

is, so that, "so far as depended on Heaven, and its gifts, 
help, and inspiration, nothing hindered me from forth- 
with living according to nature, though I still fall short of 
it through my own fault, and through not observing the 
admonitions of Heaven, and, I may almost say, its direct 
instructions ; that my body has held out so long in such 
a kind of life as mine ; that though it was my mother's 
lot to die young, she spent the last years of her life with 
me ; that whenever I wished to help any man in his need, 
I was never told that I had not the means of doing it; 
that, when I had an inclination to philosophy, I did not 
fall into the hands of a sophist." 

And, as he dwelt with gratitude on these helps and 
blessings vouchsafed to him, his mind (so, at least, it 
seems to me) would sometimes revert with awe to the 
perils and temptations of the lonely height where he 
stood, to the lives of Tiberius, Caligula, Nero, Domitian, 
in their hideous blackness and ruin ; and then he wrote 
down for himself such a warning entry as this, significant 
and terrible in its abruptness : — 

" A black character, a womanish character, a stubborn 
character, bestial, childish, animal, stupid, counterfeit, 
scurrilous, fraudulent, tyrannical ! " 

Or this : — 

" About what am I now employing my soul ? On every 
occasion I must ask myself this question, and enquire, 
What have I now in this part of me which they call the 
ruling principle, and whose soul have I now? — that of a 
child, or of a young man, or of a weak woman, or of a 
tyrant, or of one of the lower animals in the service of 
man, or of a wild beast ? " 



MARCUS AURELIUS. 311 

The character he wished to attain he knew well, and 
beautifully he has marked it, and marked, too, his sense 
of shortcoming : — 

"When thou hast assumed these names, — good, 
modest, true, rational, equal-minded, magnanimous, — 
take care that thou dost not change these names ; and, if 
thou shouldst lose them, quickly return to them. If thou 
maintainest thyself in possession of these names without 
desiring that others should call thee by them, thou wilt 
be another being, and wilt enter on another life. For to 
continue to be such as thou hast hitherto been, and to be 
torn in pieces and denied in such a life, is the character 
of a very stupid man, and one overfond of his life, and 
like those half-devoured fighters with wild beasts, who 
though covered with wounds and gore still entreat to be 
kept to the following day, though they will be exposed in 
the same state to the same claws and bites. Therefore 
fix thyself in the possession of these few names : and if 
thou art able to abide in them, abide as if thou wast 
removed to the Happy Islands." 

For all his sweetness and serenity, however, man's 
point of life " between two infinities " (of that expression 
Marcus Aurelius is the real owner) was to him anything 
but a Happy Island, and the performances on it he saw 
through no veils of illusion. Nothing is in general more 
gloomy and monotonous than declamations on the hol- 
lowness and transitoriness of human life and grandeur : 
but here, too, the great charm of Marcus Aurelius, his 
emotion, comes in to relieve the monotony and to break 
through the gloom ; and even on this eternally used topic 
he is imaginative, fresh, and striking : — 



312 MARCUS AURELIUS. 

" Consider, for example, the times of Vespasian. Thou 
wilt see all these things, people marrying, bringing up 
children, sick, dying, warring, feasting, trafficking, culti- 
vating the ground, flattering, obstinately arrogant, sus- 
pecting, plotting, wishing for somebody to die, grumbling 
about the present, loving, heaping up treasure, desiring 
to be consuls or kings. Well then, that life of these 
people no longer exists at all. Again, go to the times of 
Trajan. All is again the same. Their life too is gone. 
But chiefly thou shouldst think of those whom thou hast 
thyself known distracting themselves about idle things, 
neglecting to do what was in accordance with their proper 
constitution, and to hold firmly to this and to be content 
with it." 

Again : — 

" The things which are much valued in life are empty, 
and rotten, and trifling; and people are like little dogs 
biting one another, and little children quarrelling, crying, 
and then straightway laughing. But fidelity, and modesty, 
and justice, and truth, are fled 

' Up to Olympus from the wide-spread earth. ' 

What then is there which still detains thee here ? " 

And once more : — 

" Look down from above on the countless herds of 
men, and their countless solemnities, and the infinitely 
varied voyagings in storms and calms, and the differences 
among those who are born, who live together, and die. 
And consider too the life lived by others in olden time, 
and the life now lived among barbarous nations, and 
how many know not even thy name, and how many will 



MARCUS AURELIUS. 313 

soon forget it, and how they who perhaps now are 
praising thee will very soon blame thee, and that neither 
a posthumous name is of any value, nor reputation, nor 
anything else." 

He recognised, indeed, that (to use his own words) 
" the prime principle in man's constitution is the social;" 
and he laboured sincerely to make not only his acts 
towards his fellow-men, but his thoughts also, suitable to 
this conviction : — 

" When thou wishest to delight thyself, think of the 
virtues of those who live with thee ; for instance, the 
activity of one, and the modesty of another, and the 
liberality of a third, and some other good quality of a 
fourth." 

Still, it is hard for a pure and thoughtful man to live 
in a state of rapture at the spectacle afforded to him by 
his fellow-creatures ; above all it is hard, when such a 
man is placed as Marcus Aurelius was placed, and has 
had the meanness and perversity of his fellow-creatures 
thrust, in no common measure, upon his notice, — has 
had, time after time, to experience how " within ten days 
thou wilt seem a god to those to whom thou art now a 
beast and an ape." His true strain of thought as to his 
relations with his fellow-men is rather the following. 
He has been enumerating the higher consolations which.- 
may support a man at the approach of death, and he 
goes on : — 

" But if thou requirest also a vulgar kind of comfort 
which shall reach thy heart, thou wilt be made best 
reconciled to death by observing the objects from which 
thou art going to be removed, and the morals of those 



314 MARCUS AURELIUS. 

with whom thy soul will no longer be mingled. For it is 
no way right to be offended with men, but it is thy duty 
to care for them and to bear with them gently ; and yet 
to remember that thy departure will not be from men 
who have the same principles as thyself. For this is 
the only thing, if there be any, which could draw us the 
contrary way and attach us to life, to be permitted to live 
with those who have the same principles as ourselves. 
But now thou seest how great is the distress caused by 
the difference of those who live together, so that thou 
mayest say : ' Come quick, O death, lest perchance I too 
should forget myself.' " 

O faithless and perverse generation ! how long shall I 
be with you ? how long shall I suffer you ? Sometimes 
this strain rises even to passion : — 

" Short is the little which remains to thee of life. Live 
as on a mountain. Let men see, let them know, a real 
man, who lives as he was meant to live. If they cannot 
endure him, let them kill him. For that is better than to 
live as men do." 

It is remarkable how little of a merely local and tem- 
porary character, how little of those scorice which a reader 
has to clear away before he gets to the precious ore, how 
little that even admits of doubt or question, the morality 
of Marcus Aurelius exhibits. Perhaps as to one point 
we must make an exception. Marcus Aurelius is fond 
of urging as a motive for man's cheerful acquiescence in 
whatever befalls him, that " whatever happens to every 
man is for the interest of the universal;" that the whole 
contains nothing which is not for its advantage; that 
everything which happens to a man is to be accepted, 



MARCUS AURELIUS. 315 

" even if it seems disagreeable, because it leads to the 
health of the universe." And the whole course of the 
universe, he adds, has a providential reference to man's 
welfare : " all other things have been made for the sake 
of rational beings" Religion has in all ages freely used 
this language, and it is not religion which will object 
to Marcus Aurelius's use of it ; but science can hardly 
accept as severely accurate this employment of the terms 
interest and advantage. Even to a sound nature and a 
clear reason the proposition that things happen " for the 
interest of the universal," as men conceive of interest, 
may seem to have no meaning at all, and the proposition 
that " all things have been made for the sake of rational 
beings " may seem to be false. Yet even to this language, 
not irresistibly cogent when it is thus absolutely used, 
Marcus Aurelius gives a turn which makes it true and 
useful, when he says : " The ruling part of man can 
make a material for itself out of that which opposes it, 
as fire lays hold of what falls into it, and rises higher by 
means of this very material ; " — when he says : " What 
else are all things except exercises for the reason ? Per- 
severe then until thou shalt have made all things thine 
own, as the stomach which is strengthened makes all 
things its own, as the blazing fire makes flame and bright- 
ness out of everything that is thrown into it;" — when he 
says: "Thou wilt not cease to be miserable till thy 
mind is in such a condition, that, what luxury is to those 
who enjoy pleasure, such shall be to thee, in every matter 
which presents itself, the doing of the things which are 
conformable to man's constitution; for a man ought to 
consider as an enjoyment everything which it is in his 



3l6 MARCUS AURELIUS. 

power to do according to his own nature, — and it is in 
his power everywhere." In this sense it is, indeed, most 
true that "all things have been made for the sake of 
rational beings ; " that " all things work together for 
good." 

In general, however, the action Marcus Aurelius pre- 
scribes is action which every sound nature must recognise 
as right, and the motives he assigns are motives which 
every clear reason must recognise as valid. And so he re- 
mains the especial friend and comforter of all clear-headed 
and scrupulous, yet pure-hearted and upward- striving men, 
in those ages most especially that walk by sight, not by 
faith, and yet have no open vision : he cannot give such 
souls, perhaps, all they yearn for, but he gives them much ; 
and what he gives them, they can receive. 

Yet no, it is not for what he thus gives them that such 
souls love him most ! it is rather because of the emotion 
which lends to his voice so touching an accent, it is 
because he too yearns as they do for something unat- 
tained by him. What an affinity for Christianity had this 
persecutor of the Christians ! the effusion of Christianity, 
its relieving tears, its happy self-sacrifice, were the very 
element, one feels, for which his soul longed : they were 
near him, they brushed him, he touched them, he passed 
them by. One feels, too, that the Marcus Aurelius one 
reads must still have remained, even had Christianity been 
fully known to him, in a great measure himself; he would 
have been no Justin : but how would Christianity have 
affected him? in what measure would it have changed 
him ? Granted that he might have found, like the Alogi 
in ancient and modern times, in the most beautiful of 



MARCUS AURELIUS. 317 

the Gospels, the Gospel which has leavened Christendom 
most powerfully, the Gospel of St. John, too much Greek 
metaphysics, too much gnqsis ; granted that this Gospel 
might have looked too like what he knew already to be 
a total surprise to him : what, then, would he have said 
to the Sermon on the Mount, to the twenty-sixth chapter 
of St. Matthew? what would have become of his notions 
of the exitiabilis saperstitio, of the "obstinacy of the 
Christians " ? Vain question ! yet the greatest charm of 
Marcus Aurelius is that he makes us ask it. We see 
him wise, just, self-governed, tender, thankful, blame- 
less j yet, with all this, agitated, stretching out his arms 
for something beyond, — tendentemque manus ripce itlte- 
rioris amove. 



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